


I Have To Go Away

by Write_like_an_American



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abused people trying to do better, F/M, Family, Father-Son Relationship, Fix-It, Gen, I promise, It gets a lot more cheerful after Chapter 1, M/M, Nebula helps, Past Child Abuse, Team Bonding, Team as Family, Yondu learns how to dad, Yondu makes vague efforts at being a better person, Yondu runs away from learning how to dad, hints of Past CSA, or rather, we all support him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-09 21:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14723732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: One month after the end of the world, Yondu Udonta wakes up.Everything has changed - and yet some things remain exactly the same. Chief among them being that Peter's self-proclaimed dad is an asshole.Written for Yonduweek2018





	1. (Yondu) Red, music, ability, dream, heart

**Author's Note:**

> **Written for Yonduweek 2018! I aimed to hit all of the daily prompts in each chapter, because I'm a masochist and I love a challenge. I got most of them!**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **Each chapter focuses on one character, while following an overarching plot structure. The characters are, in order, Yondu, Rocket, Drax, Gamora, Nebula, Kraglin and Stakar (with a possible bonus chapter for Quill at the end, depending on how popular this gets!)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING: Should anyone not have checked the tags, there are some light hints of CSA in this chapter and sprinkled throughout the fic. Nothing graphic, but please don't read this if it's going to cause you harm.**

The smoke blows thick through the kuaki _-_ trees. Tatty clouds shred around the trunks, smearing the world with grime and cinders.

 

They're burning back the stubble again. Do it every year, so babu tells him. To help stave off the blighty, that’s why.

 

Oh, she knows he don't like it. Knows the smoke hurts his eyes and makes him cough – _ahu-ahu,_ yes, just like that, poor little hunter.

 

But it's for a purpose, see? The menfolk must lead the juja beasts to pasture, if we're to have milk and meat. You like juja cheese, don't you? Especially when it's cut with berries. Yes – I've seen you sneak it off papa's plate! So quick to wean – you'll make a strong hunter yet. Who knows; if you behave on your way to your papa's hut, I might see about begging a sliver…

 

Oh, you promise, do you? You swear it by Anthos? Those are big words for such a small man. We'll see, little hunter. We'll see.

 

Come now. Let's dawdle – then we can hunt for berries on the way, eh? Yes, the trees are still bare – but I’m sure it is just a late bloom. Anthos will always provide, so long as we stay true.

 

Look, little hunter. Look. Don't you run off now. We're high on the hill – if I lift you, you'll be able to see the whole village!

 

Oof. Ah, yes. These old knees aren't what they used to be. Hold my _tahlei,_ boy – that's it. Not too rough – see how it droops! You don't want to tear it away.

 

Look down there. The smoke is clearing, see? Just like I told you it would.

 

Silly little mite, a-weepin' and a-wailin' cause you think the whole world's a-fire.

 

The tribe has settled from the spring migration. You know what that means, yes? That's right, little hunter. The harvest will follow. There'll be food soon, Anthos-willing. Then you can gobble all the juja cheese you like.

 

Ah. Our yurts: they crowd our clearing, a hundred plump round breasts. Not like these saggy old tits, eh? Heh.

 

Aren't they beautiful? Clothed in cheerful kilims, their nipples point at the sky.

 

That tent lags behind the rest. Yes – like a skeleton. Where have you seen skeletons, little Hunter? Oh? The plain heathens that wash up in the river? _Tchhka_! You're far too young; what is that brother of yours thinking. Little eyes should not see such sights.

 

Don’t fret so – the blighty cannot touch us here. We bask in the light of Anthos. Come harvest time, he will reward our devotion. We simply must have faith.

 

Look – here's your proof. Skeletal though it might be, the tent frame is far from dead. A hive buzzes around it – can you hear? No, that's the crackling stubble. Listen harder. Yes, that's it – the villagers are laughing.

 

That tent must belong to Oola One-Arm – see how they help her fasten each carpet in its ceremonial place? The rich pile-rugs, the warm red bokhara, the messy gabbeh – like the one we wrapped you in when we crossed the mountain path, to keep our little hunter warm?

 

One day, son-of-my-son, you will have a yurt just like it, and a grandson to give shoulder-rides of your own.

 

Yes, yes. And a _tahlei_ as wrinkled as mine. Do not laugh – I'll have you know this is the mark of great venerability! Even if stoops and wobbles like the wattles of the guachi _-_ fowl.

 

 _Tchka._ I suppose it is rather funny.

 

Go on then, you little rapscallion. Laugh.

 

What's that? Help them with the yurt? Well, why not. Come on then, I'll put you down. Ah, I'm glad you need my hand to walk; I dread the day when you run off and leave me behind.

 

Oh, it'll come, little Hunter. It is the way of all things. But us old ones, we cannot help but wish we could still run astride with you.

 

Oh.

 

How strange.

 

A change – oh, what _is_ that? Do you feel it? A change – impossible!

 

A new creature walks on Anthos’s earth!

 

Ah, you hear? The laughter has stopped. It is not just your babu going senile! But what could cause...

 

So strange! Such a strange ripple through Anthos, and all his creation!

 

It's getting closer.

 

Why is it getting closer?

 

No. No I have never felt anything like this, not in all my years. I don't know, I don't...

 

Ah. No, don't cry. Not to worry, my darling, my little hunter, my son-of-my-son, my dear-to-the-heart. I'm sure it's nothing. Come on now. Back to the village. You can crawl faster than I walk, no? You go ahead. Hurry on now. Hurry home. Papa's waiting.

 

Don't you worry about old babu. I'm right behind you, boy. Just you crawl back to the village. You crawl fast as you can.

 

Don't you look back now – I'll know if you look back! Just a game boy. Just a game.

 

Go. Please, please go. I'll see you at supper tonight. That's it. Fast, remember. Fast as you can.

 

I love you, my little hunter. I love you so very much.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Red fades to black. Yondu fades with it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

He doesn't know how much time passes. Doesn't know much of anything, except that when his eyes next open, red swims across his vision and he hears the strum of a Kree sitar.

Memory flows in fragments, like icebergs down the mountains in the summer melt.

Burnt incense. Silk. The stink of the pens, the brief gratification of being showered and squirted in perfume before the sale.

It makes you sneeze, the perfume. Sneeze like burning stubble.

Suddenly you're crying and you can't stop.

You keep whimpering _babu_ until the merchant loses patience and holds your head under the shower head, clamping your wriggling, miserable, eel-slick body between his legs so you can’t squirm free.

 _You want a wet face, do you?_ _I’ll give you one, brat. Next time you cry I’ll drown you._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Red. Red-red-red. Tahlei-color.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The new man doesn't hurt you, not immediately. You stupidly decide you like him.

 

But he still calls your _tahlei_   'crest _'_ and 'fin' and touches it though he ain't family.

 

He slaps you when corrected, because _you do not talk back, I am your Master now._ You get kicked when you fight, kicked harder when you cry. You’re not dragged to the shower and you’re not drowned, drowned like unwanted juja-calves, but this man – this Master – has new threats, and he spits them in your face with his icy, mint-cold breath.

 

_You must not shed tears. Dolls don’t cry. Now be quiet, before I decide you are not worth the price tag and feed you into the mincer._

 

A child from each family, they demanded. Said they'd pay handsomely in produce – fruit that never rotted, milk that never turned. Supplies worth lives, supplies desperately needed,

 

There was a famine coming. The Zatoan knew it. They'd watched it ravage its way across the river basin and up the mountain's far camber. The winter had been a harsh one, and papa had two other pouchlings – the last surviving from Yondu's six-whelp litter – still in need of wet-nursing, since mama went out to forage and never came home.

 

Yondu was the strongest. The brightest-eyed, the fleetest-footed, the little hunter. Papa prayed he might survive, as the star-walkers detached from the woodland shadows, clad in fabric made of night.

 

One bore a wizened _tahlei,_ hacked off at the spine, to prove that they meant business.

 

Papa was right. Yondu survived.

 

If Yondu stayed, he'd have perished like the rest of them – starving in yurts abraded by the sand-filled summer wind, dust parching every river and the guachi _-_ fowl picking meat from their bones.

 

Perhaps he ought to be grateful. Perhaps he oughta thank his papa's memory, who carried him in his pouch and sold him in the hopes of saving his siblings.

 

But Yondu ain't never done nothing just because he ought.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Red. Sunset red, giant red. The red of a swollen star, expanding around the girth, popping the clasps on its belt as it gobbles one planet after the next.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

First time Yondu sees his _tahlei,_ he’s peering in a stream. His older brother stands beside him, only survivor of the litter before.

 

( _Too old to be tamed._ The Star-walkers sneer as he runs at them, hunting knife comically large in his six-summers hand. He receives plasma bolts in retaliation, boom ba-ba-boom, punching holes in his chest. They tread on his body as they approach papa. Yondu always thought brother looked so huge. Now, as the Star-walkers grab papa’s tahlei and tip his head into the light, Yondu stares at the leaky corpse and realizes brother is small.)

 

_(What are you crying for? His father, are you? Rejoice! After we take this brat, you will have two less mouths to feed.)_

 

Back to the stream. The woods have that docility that accompanies early mornings.

 

A guachi-fowl coos to her chicks, and the juja calves snore in their pen.

 

Yondu's brother pokes his reflection, stirring it apart with a stick, the end of which is gummy and golden with sap.

 

“That was you,” he says, giggling. “Now yer gone. I killed yer mirror-self, see?”

 

Yondu stares in horror. When his lower lip wibbles, his brother (what was his name again?) lets the water smooth.

 

“It's okay. He's back. Yer mirror-self can't die forever. That's the part of you that belongs to Anthos, Babu says. We all have one – even the heathens. They came from him, although they's too stupid to know his name.”

 

The heathens are also too stupid – too proud – too accept the Kree's offer. They perish before the Zatoan, and the Kree take what they want from their ghost-towns, studying their corpses, flaying them on operation slabs, altars to a scientific god.

 

They’re hunting for something. Anthos's Gift – the connection that lets them steer the yaka. They want to weaponize it, augment it, turn it from a hunting tool into one of murder and war.

 

You can't take bows and arrows to a plas-canon fight, after all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Second time Yondu sees his _tahlei,_ he stands before the mirrored wall of Master's bedroom, a man's grip bruising a boy's shoulder. A whisper seeps in his ear like tepid swamp-water.

 

_Pretty as an angel. Oh, what a lovely crest._

 

Yondu don’t talk back, fight, or cry. Not anymore. He’s a very fast learner.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Third time... What happened the third time? It’s all so hazy, so blurred.

 

Red, all of it red.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

That damned music keeps playing. Twist as he might – soft blankets beneath him, soft like the sheets on Master’s bed – he can’t get it out of his head.

It ain’t Kree sitars at all. Terran _guitars._

But what the hell’s a Terran?

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Red.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Ah. That’s it.

 

The third time.

 

His _tahlei_ flops before him, blood slicking the knife in his hand.

 

They want more Battlers, they say. Always need more Battlers. Grind through ‘em like naughty slaves in the mincer.

 

Centaurians are less durable than the Kree. They’re paper-people by most accounts. No exoskeleton, no psionic shields. They can survive tumbling out of the occasional tree, but that don’t help against plasma shot.

 

But this crusade has dragged out far longer than the Accusers accounted for. On top of the main Kree-Xandar conflict, a dozen simultaneous skirmishes flourish on their home front.

 

The Pale Kree mount yet another Revolution. They take advantage of the government's strapped resources, freeing slaves and booby-trapping asteroid belts and diving kamikaze onto war barges, fire trailing from thrusters mid-meltdown.

 

The establishment teeters on the brink of collapse. The noble class goes about their highfalutin lives like there ain’t a guillotine over their necks, but whispers abound, and throughout the Kree Empire Masters treat their slaves a little rougher, a little rawer; keep ‘em in their rightful place.

 

After ten years, Yondu is sick of it.

 

The Accusers need canon fodder – a tidal wave of slaves to swamp the opposition. And you can’t be a battler with a target waggling about on the top of your head.

 

Master will be pissed. Yondu’s older than he likes now, but that crest of his always gets attention. It’s a part of Yondu, but it don’t belong to him, and he ain’t in his rights to remove it.

 

After this, Master will either feed him to the war machine or the mincer.

 

Either, Yondu decides, as red trickles down his back, is preferable.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The red blob hovers, floating like a nebula.

Perhaps it ain’t a tahlei after all.

“Dad,” he hears, although he doesn’t know why.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Rather than laughing when presented with Yondu's cage, the battle slave deployer strokes his chin.

 

_The prototype will be ready by the end of the Annual Cycle._

 

_This one chopped off his own fin, you say? That takes grit._

 

_Perhaps, if he survives the year, we’ll let him test it._

 

Then the world dissolves into a broiling ocean, warhammers spinning and Xandarians screaming, red seeping into the tarry blue-black of their blood.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Red.

The blob tinted orange towards the top, colored like rust and stubble-fire and the first of the three sunrises on Alpha Centauri.

_To be calm, when you've found something going on..._

Who was singing? Where was the band?

All Yondu could see was that lone, red lump – not a sliced off tahlei or the chunk of treated yaka-alloy that would be his salvation, but a figure.

Orange hair, pink skin, red coat. Blurred together like wet clay.

“Yondu? Are you awake? Can you hear me, do you – do you know me? Do you know who I am?”

“Brat,” Yondu said, because the word fit so fondly in his mouth. Then, in a sudden epiphany: “Quill.”

He didn't know where he knew the name from, only that it incited a stabbing pain in his chest. Yondu didn't like that. He shied from it, trying to cover his ears.

_Stop the music, stop. Make it all stop._

When the darkness lapped at his shins, he dived in gratefully.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Next time he woke, Quill weren't there.

Boy fucked off, abandoned him, deserted his papa in his hour of need.

Go fuckin' figure. That's what you got for raising a whelp – disrespect, stolen orbs, a lousy death in hard-vac. Only thing was, that death didn't seem to have stuck.

Yondu groaned – a long and fervent indictment of whichever god kept him living.

“May I fetch the patient some water?”

The robo-doc received a louder groan still.

Shit. They weren’t on the _Eclector._ It was all dribbling back to him in fragments, blips and blurs, sight and color and smell.

Scorched earth. Ego.

Little white bones.

Those bones dribbled into canyons as the crust cracked below their feet and fire belched up in a glossy red geyser, nipping on the heels of a Ravager and his boy.

And now here he lay. In some swanky medi-facility, sterile enough that Yondu was gonna have his work cut out rebuilding the layer of mites and grease on his skin.

The robo-doc bent over him. Thing was classic-model, rolled off a Shi'ar production line. Yondu's eyes weren’t functioning right; all he saw was a dome, white enough to ache. But he knew this make – stole a whole batch of ‘em, once upon a time, fresh from the factory and worth a pretty dime.

“May I fetch the patient water?”

“Y'all can fetch the patient a stiff fuckin' drink.”

Robo-doc bleeped disapprovingly. “That is not in my protocol.”

Ugh. Give him the Ravager sawbones any day. Copsie was more than happy to break open his stash of paintstripper with his patients, whether or not they needed anesthetic.

But Copsie was dead now. Just like everybody else.

Everybody but him and Quill.

Yondu knuckled at his aching head. Why was everything so blurry? Were the solars up too bright?

Perhaps his sight had adjusted to the backs of his eyelids. Perhaps the damage done by hard-vac was permanent, and he'd see the world in fatty lumps forevermore.

“Fetch me Quill then,” he muttered, dropping an arm over his malfunctioning eyes. “Fetch me my idjit Terran, so's I can punch him in person.”

And tell him to quit blasting _Father & Son _on repeat. Yondu didn't know how long he'd been coma-bound – perhaps he should've asked before shooing the droid. But the opening chords of that song hung like stubble-smoke in his mind. They formed a gateway between past and present, one which he wished would stay shut.

_Take your time, think a lot, think of everything you've got – you may still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not._

Yondu had very almost not been here at all. The dreams were what remained, tethering him to reality through the drone of a half-remembered song, and the fuzzy outline of a boy that made Yondu think _mine._

He drifted through that liminal haze between sleep and wakefulness where everything tingled like Kraglin was running dirty nails along his tattoos. Then the beeping started.

Yondu's first thought? Offence. Which skrull-scrotumed moomba-fucker dared disturb his rest?

His second? Recognition. Comm watch. Someone wanted to chat.

Being as his other options were droids and Quill, Yondu decided to make the most of the good conversation.

He shuffled a little higher on the pillows, then remembered this was a fancy satellite-medicenter designed with _patient comfort_ in mind.

“Up,” he croaked. “Wanna sit.”

His pallet obeyed rather too eagerly for Yondu's tastes.

“Slowly, dammit! Hell! You ain’t no flarkin’ catapult!”

He clung to the mattress until the spinning stopped. A low table squatted beside his bed, upon which his effects were heaped. He couldn't see them, not properly. No details. But some shapes, some hues, were as familiar to him as his own mugshot.

Three glass baubles, all split with hairline cracks.

One red duster, folded far neater than it had ever been since the day he put it on.

A troll doll, king of the castle, grinning from the top of the mound.

And the comm-watch, flashing with a familiar blue and gold insignia. One which, last Yondu recalled, had him blocked on every channel.

“S-stakar?”

The comm watch pinged in agreement. It blared the connecting tone, activated by his voice.

Oh hell no.

“Cancel call, cancel call! Fuck dammit, put him through to voicemail!”

The comm watch, more than accustomed to jumbling drunken orders, sifted the cuss words with mechanical ease. It did as it was told.

“Yondu,” said Stakar.

Yondu did his best not to choke.

Stakar was saying his name. His _name._

“Mute,” he garbled, and rolled to plant his face in the pillow.

Quill, with perfect timing, chose that moment to walk in. “So blasting into space without a suit wasn't enough for you? You really need to suffocate yourself too?”

Yondu pushed a weak arm from under the thermo-reg blanket. He elevated the middle finger.

A snort sounded from his right. “Yeah, yeah. Same to you, geezer.”

Yondu twisted to face it. His whole body shook. He must've been here a while – he'd grown spoilt, accustomed to lounging about and letting robotic doctors wipe his ass. He found Quill just as bleary and indistinct as the rest of the room.

It was him, alright. The big red blob that haunted him through the wishy-washy landscape of his dreams.

“'Geezer', huh? The hell happened to 'dad'?”

“Last time I called you dad, you started saying ‘master’ in your sleep.” Quill placed each word matter-of-fact, like he was laying bricks rather than shattering every secret Yondu'd fought to keep that way. “Are... are we gonna talk about that, or...”

“Hell no!”

Peter nodded. His face was round and pink as a blood moon. Yondu couldn't tell whether he was smiling, but he clicked the music off and on again, whatever that might mean.

_It's not time to make a change..._

“Okay. Well, um. I suppose you're wondering where you are.”

Yondu gestured to the robo-doc, who rolled behind Peter on its gyroscopic wheel. “Sparky here can fill me in. Don't you got a crew to get back to?”

Peter crossed his arms. “First you sacrifice yourself for me, then you're awake for ten minutes and you're back to being an asshole? Dude, talk about mixed signals.”

“Don't get cocky. If ya hadn't broke your spacemask, we wouldn’t be in this shit.”

Peter laughed. It didn't sound humorous. “God, you're such a dick.”

“Mm-hm.”

Yondu looked at his lap. His fingers twined around each other, blue running into blue like two splats of watercolor paint.

“I bought ya that spacemask. Remember that?”

“Course I do. You're the senile one.”

“Remember how I taught ya to use it?”

The collection of red-orange blobs drew itself up. “Yeah, man. You showed me how, made me practice, then randomly vented me one time I was walking around the ship. Ravager version of a pop-quiz, I guess.”

It least it was easier to meet Peter's eyes when he couldn't properly see them. “Y'know, in hindsight, that weren't nice.”

Quill waited. The silence stretched between them, soupy and oppressive. Then, at long last, Quill scoffed and turned to leave.

“That's all I get, huh. _Wasn't nice._ ”

What the hell? _He_ was the offended one? Here was Yondu, putting effort into smoothing things over for the first damn time in his life, and the brat wouldn’t even meet him half way?

“Boy,” he said, jabbing a finger after the retreating stack of blobs. “Tell me this – did ya ever forget how to use the mask, after that?”

Quill paused, one boot on the threshold. Yondu could tell from the cede of ginger to pink he'd turned to glare at him, although the colors intermingled like layers of booze and syrup in a cocktail. Faster than Yondu's swimmy eyes could follow, he marched back and pressed something roughly into his hand.

“I've changed my mind. You can give this to me when you're better. If you've got the guts for it, of course.”

Yondu felt plastic, warm from Peter's jacket pocket. Seemed he kept it tucked there, in the lining over his heart.

“Rejectin' a gift?” he said hoarsely. “Mighty bad karma.”

“Wait till you see how much of your crap I pawned to buy you this hospital bed. You won't want to give it to me then.”

Yondu blanched. He pushed off the pillows, best he could, struggling to sit with atrophied muscles. “Arrow?”

Quill let the pause linger far too long. But whatever he saw on Yondu's frost-weathered face, his unfocused eyes, it made him sigh.

“I didn’t pawn shit. I’m just being an ass. The arrow’s still broken though – we figured that was safer. Y'know. In case you woke up and...”

_Started killin' my masters all over again._

Yondu nodded. Not having it tucked by his side in the hospital bed… He didn’t like it.

It made him antsy, especially seeing as they'd put him up in some swank neck of the woods. He didn't know his exits, couldn't case the place while bedbound.

Kraglin always used to sneak his arrow in around Copsie, despite the _no weapons in the medbay_ rule. Knew Yondu better than he knew himself, that man. Where he couldn’t understand Yondu – the collars, the whips, _Master_ – he knew better than to pry.

“Stakar's paying for everything,” Peter continued, “security included.” He whistled to himself – another of those little habits swapped between them, like how Yondu hummed bars of Terran music and occasionally caught his foot tapping along. “He's pretty scary. But that woman of his, she's scarier.”

“Aleta. If she catches ya callin' her ‘his woman', ain't nothin' I can do to save ya.”

“ _Definitely_ scarier. Look, have they commed? Stakar's notified whenever you wake up.”

Great. Trapped, coddled, _and_ surveilled. Three of Yondu's least favorite things.

“My eyes,” he said instead, because that was an easier subject than his ex-whatever-the-fuck Stakar had been. “The hell ain't they workin'?”

Peter's hand performed a blurry indecisive dance before dropping on Yondu's arm. “It'll come back. Doctors all agree – just have to sit with a bacta bandage a few times a day. Last of the wax and polish.”

“What am I, yer damn ship?” Yondu shrugged him off after a generous five seconds. “Where's Krags? Where's the rest of yer boyband?”

“Boy _and girl_ band. Gamora's touchy about that. We couldn't just sit around your sickbed, old man. You've been out a month, and we got a galleon to fuel.”

“My galleon,” said Yondu on instinct, but inside he was whirling again, like when the back of the bed cranked up to forty-five degrees.

 _A month._ A whole fucking Lunar cycle.

A Lunar cycle of dreams and smoke and tahleis and red, red-red-red, bubbling up like blood from a hole that wouldn't stop no matter how hard he pressed his hands on it, begging his gun-brother to stay with him as the air shimmered with liquid plasma and the earth dyed crimson, and...

“Hey. You still with me?”

Yondu blinked at the pink thing waving in front of his face. He resisted the urge to bite it.

“Krags doin' okay?” he managed.

“Yeah. Picked up the bodies of the crew. Y'know, T-tullk and Oblo and them lot.”

Yondu noted that little quaver. It was good to know that for all his guff about striking his own path, Quill still mourned his fallen kin.

“Stakar's got them in cold storage,” Quill continued. “Says it's only right we wait for you to preside over the funeral. Captain and all.”

“Ain’t no cap'n. Not anymore, not of Stakar's.”

“Yeah, well.” Quill tapped the comm watch. Dammit – he must be able to see that icon: _message received_. “You might want to listen to that first. And, uh.” He patted Yondu’s hand, the zune curled in a cage of blue fingers. “I'll be waiting for this. Y'know. When you're ready.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Yondu waited for the door to whoosh shut. He sent a flipped bird at Quill’s back.

_When you're ready._

Like Yondu needed to be cossetted, gentled into goodness like a stars-damned toddler...

 _Father & Son _reached the end of the track and looped back to the beginning. Hell. Had Quill even listened to the other songs?

Yondu stabbed the buttons until he clipped the off switch. He subsided on his pillows with a drawn-out sigh.

Sleep tempted him. How the hell could he be flat-out in a coma for a whole flarkin' Lunar and still crawl out drowsy from the far end? But if Yondu didn't face this now, he never would.

“You heard the boy," he told his watch. "Play the damn message, already.”

He listened to Stakar speak. The timbre of his voice more than the words. He thanked flark that the fuzziness in his eyes could be blamed on frost damage and glared at the solar lights so he had an excuse for the runniness too.

“Stop,” he muttered before the voicemail reached that final _I forgive._ He drilled his knuckles against his temple, zune still clutched in his fist. “Hell. _Hell._ Okay. First thing's first.”

He peered at the teetering totem-stack of IV feeds, cardiogams, emergency defibrillators and whatever else they'd hooked him up to.

“Comm Rat,” he told his watch. “Tell him I'm nappin' for now, but in a coupla hours, I'mma need his help staging a jailbreak.”

The robo-doc glided around his bed to pouf his pillows. “This is not a jail.”

“Yeah, yeah. That's what all the best ones say.” Yondu pointed to his pile of belongings. “Think ya can help me out, meals-on-wheels?”

“My designation is F-C18F2, but most of my patients call me…”

“Ya could be called Tulip for all I care. Now, are ya gonna fetch me the damn scarf, or do I gotta start throwin’ shit?”

Tulip beeped its disapproval. “There is no need for that.”

“Fetch me the fuckin’ scarf, Tulip.”

Tulip obeyed.

Yondu closed his eyes soon after. His throat was warm. The weight of the scarf was soft and familiar, nothing like a collar.

Least this way, anyone who came in to nosy at him while he snored wouldn’t have to look at his uglies.

Sleep swam towards him. He wasn't met with dreams of vivid red. Only darkness, blissful and absolute, as if he'd fallen again into hard vac and was drifting with the souls of his unburnt men, lost in the space between stars.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The tense change is intentional, but I'm not sure how I feel about it..... Any thoughts are welcome!**


	2. (Rocket) Orange, Holiday, Child, Scarf, Fantasy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Me @ my brain: _stop being a panicky fool and upload the thing; it doesn't have to be perfect._ Sorry I'm already behind on the days! D:**

Blue had been awake one cycle and he was already pissing folks off.

Better than the alternative, Rocket supposed. He would much rather have the git alive in all his ornery imperfection than waste one more hour by his coma bed.

Out here, losing people was easy. Spacer life was fast-paced and brutal. Didn't matter which faction you tied yourself to. Whether you wore a flame patch on your sleeve or called yourself a Guardian, you died just as quickly and just the same.

And so you wrote them off, slashing names from rosters, dedicating one after another to the dark.

You lived at space's mercy and died at its whims. So much could go wrong. So much often did – it didn't even make news when a ship got roasted by a random solar flare, sucked into a black hole, or becalmed in the vast doldrums between: left dark without engine thrust until the crew ate each other or vented themselves to get the inevitable over with.

Made you realize something, that. You floated in a universe that didn’t give a shit.

Life weren't designed. Weren't no Halfworld scientist looming over the galaxy with a scalpel and a mechanical spine. All Rocket was, all any of them were, was a series of accidents, happy or otherwise.

If he was of a more optimistic mindset, he might theorize that this was what gave life meaning. Despite Higher Sentient Life Forms’ best efforts to wipe each other out over wars and diplomatic skirmishes and territorial disputes, at the end of the cycle they were all in this together. From the smallest bacterium to the Jotunn who lumbered across the frost-flats, their dark skin sparkling with verglas; every living creature, simply by existing, raged against the dying of the light.

Some folks might argue that made Yondu Udonta a miracle. A man who'd taken a dip where no mortal was supposed to dabble their toes.

Rocket just figured he was a stubborn old bastard who couldn't do anything right, not even sacrifice himself for his son.

He hopped off the workbench, clicking the tension from behind his mechanical knees. The welding visor peeled off with a rubbery squeak, the strap leaving a flattened ring of fur.

“C'mon, Groot. We've got us a damsel in distress, says he's in need of saving.”

“I am Groot?”

“You think I won’t call him that to his face? Why, lil’ buddy. It’s like ya don’t know me at all.”

Rocket poked the arrow. Deeming it cool enough to carry, he tucked it through the loop on his gun belt and strutted for the door.

Fixing it was a doddle. The two halves met in a seamless meld, and though the shaft stretched a quarter-inch shorter than previously, to the untrained eye it looked good as new.

Shame Rocket couldn't take his welding torch to people, bind 'em together so tightly that they couldn’t be forced apart. It’d make life a helluva lot easier, that.

He glanced over his shoulder.

“Groot? You comin' or not?”

Groot grew faster than ever thanks to the mediship's abundance of solar lights and water (they got ice shipments from comet freighters once a week, so it wasn't even recycled to the point where you could taste your own piss!) He was too big to occupy his usual space on Rocket's shoulder – not that this stopped him from trying.

Rocket smacked the roots away for the third time. “Walk by yourself! I ain’t raising no lazy brat.”

“I am Groot!”

“Oh yeah? What's got you so wired? Don't you wanna see Blue?”

“…I am Groot.”

“Sure, you're a bit big for a Twig now. Might have to graduate to 'Branch'.” Rocket sniggered at his own joke. He stopped when he realized he was the only one laughing.

Groot looked up at him, all fresh young bark and shiny eyes.

“I am Groot?” he said.

Rocket sighed. “I know.”

It weren't easy on any of them, last time Blue opened his eyes. He hadn't exactly been all-there, and he spouted a whole bunch of shit in bastardized Kree that made the hair on Rocket’s hackles stand on-end.

He knew they didn't talk about stuff. Knew it wasn't their way. But seeing his buddy like that? It ached in places Rocket never expected to feel hurt.

Rocket forced a smile. “It'll be fine. Quit worryin'. Blue'll be back on his feet soon enough – then it's big happy families all around.”

“I am Groot?”

“Yeah. _Family._ I said it.”

But just cause he said it, that didn’t mean he _believed._ Folks like him and Yondu were far easier to love when they were unconscious.

Rocket locked the hangar door, glancing back to where the two uneven halves of Quill’s M-ship hung on their suspension straps, awaiting some TLC.

He wondered how long it would take Yondu's family, old and new, to realize.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Drama queen. You're awake.”

“Rat,” greeted Yondu, grin spreading across his mug like an outbreak of pox. “Lookit you! All dolled up for me.”

Rocket snorted. He combed the engine grease from his whiskers, wiping his filthy claws on Yondu’s sheet.

The _Milano_ needed more than a quick run-over with the remoleculizer. That might work well enough for patching the usual breaches incurred by battering through a quantum asteroid field, but their current problem was a helluva lot worse.

Rocket had the ship’s schematics saved to a datadex. However, while this gave him a blueprint onto which her chassis could be 3D-printed, it cannibalized the available matter in the process, spreading her aluminium hull plates dangerously thin. They hadn’t managed to salvage the whole ship – the rains opened before they could dock, and by the time they reached the crash site the ship was sodden to her circuit boards and spread along a tree-strewn river gully.

So Rocket was trying to patch as much manually as he could. This meant doing all the fiddly bits – the descaling and the anti-rust procedures on the exposed tubing in the snapped wing – by hand (or paw, as the case may be).

It also meant that those paws were far from their cleanest.

The robo-doc chirped its displeasure. “Please. This is a place of healing.”

“This is a place of fuckin’ boredom, I think ya mean.” Yondu sniffed his armpit; recoiled. “Ugh. It’s so clean I can’t even smell myself.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Rocket fidgeted foot to foot, then decided _what the heck,_ and thwacked the arrow against Yondu’s nearest outstretched calf. “Here.”

Yondu damn near pounced on the thing. His eyes went bright as Groot’s around candy.

“You two want a moment alone, or…”

Yondu pursed his lips. Rocket hastily backed up, waving for Groot, loitering in the doorway, to do the same.

“Woah there. I’ve seen the medical reports. Your eyesight ain’t…”

“Aw, calm all six of yer fuzzy tits.”

“I don’t got no” –

“I fly it with _my heart,_ remember? Not my eyes.” He even added in a cheesy lash flutter. Rocket didn’t stop retreating.

“Yeah, but you still need eyesight to _steer,_ and…”

“Mister Udonta,” said the robo-doc reproachfully. “Weapons are prohibited in our medical facility, and…”

“I am Groot?”

Yondu whistled. The arrow trembled, climbing into the air. Then it shot forwards, viper-fast, and skewered the robo-doc through its processing cortex.

Rocket threw his arms in front of his face, shouting _Groot_ on instinct. Then, realizing he wasn’t dead, quickly put them down and smoothed his jumpsuit.

Behind him, Groot broke out a smile for the first time that solar cycle. His laugh tinkled to a halt at Rocket’s glare.

“The hell was that for, Blue? Look – you’re bein’ a shitty influence!”

“You’re the one what bitches about his language." Yondu waved at Groot before whistling his arrow back to him, catching it out of the air. “Heya, Twig. That there was Tulip. Sorry he couldn’t stay for introductions.”

Groot drew himself up to his full height. “I am Groot.”

Rocket, still breathing heavily, jerked a thumb at him. “Says he’s more of a branch, nowadays.”

“They grow up so fast. Don’tchu worry.” Yondu couldn’t focus on the youngest Guardian, but his gaze roved in his general direction. “You’ll always be a Twig to me. C’mon up here.” He patted the bed. “Lemme look atcha.”

Groot approached the bed. He was walking far less confidently than usual, like when he uprooted and took his first tottering steps from the pot. He stopped a foot before the mattress.

“I am Groot,” he said, quietly.

Yondu looked to Rocket, eyebrows quizzical.

Rocket unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. He never minced Groot’s words. Never tossed ‘em round and threw ‘em together to make it look like his buddy was saying something he wasn’t.

Respect, that. Respect for who he was, and who came before.

Sometimes though, it wasn’t half tempting.

“He says he didn’t think you was ever gonna wake up.”

Yondu watched him with those stupid, too-clever eyes. Weren’t fair, how the pair of them could read each other so well while everyone else remained a mystery.

“He ain’t the only one, huh.”

“No. No, he ain’t.”

It had been a whole Lunar cycle. More than long enough for the lot of them – all spacers, all accustomed to fast-striking, quick-waning grief – to lose hope.

There’d even been a vote held a few days back, where phrases like _life support_ and _dignity_ and _we have to think about what Yondu would want_ kept cropping up.

Rocket wasn’t proud of how he’d cast his lot.

Yondu examined his arrow. He traced the fletching with his finger, then ran it up and down the shaft.

Rocket prepared himself for some crack about second-rate handiwork. But Yondu only sucked his teeth and placed the arrow on the bed beside him, where both his guests had rejected his offer to sit.

“Did a fine job, Rat. Flies like a charm.”

Rocket huffed a laugh. “You’re only sayin’ that cause you’re half-blind. Wait until you actually see it.”

Behind them, the felled robo-doc – Tulip? – sputtered another twinkling gush of sparks, like fireworks at that funeral Yondu didn’t need.

Rocket sighed. “That’s gonna cost Stakar a bunch.”

Yondu lifted one shoulder higher than the other. He seemed pleased with himself. “Fool’s own fault for putting me up.”

“You’d be dead if he hadn’t. Have you returned his calls yet?” Rocket didn’t need to glance at the blinking _full inbox_ icon on Yondu’s comms watch. “Course you haven’t. I give him until the end of the week before he comes knocking in person.”

Yondu leaned forwards, gripping his pillow so he didn’t overbalance and crash face-first onto his thighs. “Which means I need to get out of here _fast_. An I’mma need your help to do it.”

Rocket waited for the punchline. It didn’t arrive.

“Shit,” he said. “You weren’t joking?”

“I ain’t a joking man.” Liar. Rocket shook his head.

“Hell, Blue. You can’t walk. You got a tube in your dick so you can piss and you can barely sit up without pillows at your back. You need to take it slow, rest up.”

“I am Groot.”

“Damn right, he ain’t as young as he used to be. He needs…”

“He needs,” Yondu interrupted, “to stop bein’ told _what_ he needs. He needs to get the hell away from this. From folks wantin’ him to be what he ain’t, and gettin’ disappointed because of it, an’…”

Yondu’s animated speech disrupted his cushion throne. Rocket caught a glimpse of something dark poking out from beneath.

“Blue. Blue, is that Quill’s zune?”

Yondu’s throat worked around a swallow. He’d had the robot fetch his scarf from his pile of effects. It hid the horrible scars around his throat, but Yondu couldn’t bury all his issues under cloth and mouldering, crackly leather.

He looked lost for all of a second. Then it was gone again. He pried out the little box, pantomiming that he’d forgotten where he’d left it.

“Says he wants me to hand it to him personal-like. Make up for all them birthy-day’s I missed, or whatever.”

Rocket didn’t trust that scathing tone for an instant.

“Dunno why they’re so special to him,” Yondu continued. He hunched to unknot the earphones, as absorbed as any man who didn’t want to concentrate on his own words. “Whas so special about getting older?”

Rocket didn’t have an answer. “Most likely, Quill just likes the excuse to party. Look, this grand escape of yours. What you thinking?”

Yondu stopped fiddling with the zune long enough to grin. “You’re in?”

“Didn’t say that, did I?”

“I am Groot.”

“What do you mean, _you_ _are_?”

Yondu pointed to the kid and nodded. Rocket shook his head.

“No. _No,_ he’s way too young to be your accomplice. Groot, I said _no_.”

“I am Groot.”

“I do too let you make your own decisions!”

“I am Groot.”

“Now that’s just low.”

Yondu cocked his head. “What he say?”

This time, Rocket took vicious delight in relaying the message: “That I’m as bad a papa as you. C’mon, Blue. Half of being a dad is just sticking around, right?” Like he wasn’t talking out his ass. He had an even lower bar than Yondu – his pops got taken out the cage so he wouldn’t eat the kits. “End of the day, Blue, running away ain’t gonna help shit.”

Yondu’s brows lowered. He must realize that he needed to convince them – with his muscles wasted following his Lunar cycle of bed rest, no way was he pulling a runner alone.

“It’s gonna help me. C’mon. I don’t wanna sit here all feeble while Quill _and_ Stakar yell at me.”

Rocket thought of Stakar’s face as they loaded Yondu’s limp body into the bacta tank. In a nasty karmic twist, the bastard had been in self-imposed exile ever since.

“The codger ain’t gonna yell.” He took stock of Yondu’s scowl. “And that’s so much _worse,_ isn’t it? Knowing he forgives you, having that pressure piled on to _be a better person,_ cause you don’t got the excuse of his hatred to make you a dick…”

Yondu’s eyes widened; Rocket quirked a grin.

“Oh yeah. I can dish out the truth as well. Look Blue. Why not just lie about a while? Let yourself get better? Enjoy the princess treatment while it lasts.”

Despite his bluster, Yondu did look tempted. “Bet Kraglin’d pamper my ass.”

Rocket hadn’t known until then that his whiskers could shrivel. “Gross! There’s a kid here, you old skeezer. You and skinny better keep your love-life to yourself.” Although that in itself gave Rocket pause. “He, uh. Ain’t visited yet?”

Yondu’s face was artfully blank. “Nah. Prolly thinks he’s got a reckoning coming, what with the mutiny and all.”

Rocket sauntered closer, resting elbows on the bed's edge. “Does he?”

“I ain’t decided yet. Another reason why I need some fuckin’ space.”

Rocket empathized. Sorta.

Yondu’d been running from his problems – namely, the consequences of his piss-poor attitude and his aversion to therapy – for far too long to stop now. Just because he got shoved into coma-sleep for a month, that didn’t mean a shiny new person popped out the other side.

A hand tugged his. It was smaller than Rocket’s paw, but not by much. “I am Groot.”

Yondu fixed his filmy eyes on them. “Uh, come again?”

“Holiday.” Rocket musingly combed his whiskers. “He says you need a holiday.”

And, as Yondu held the arrow and zune between big blue hands that trembled a little more than they were supposed to, Rocket stroked his fluffy chin one last time, and decided he agreed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So Yondu's trying to avoid his issues, as usual.... And Rocket's going to help. Who knows, this might actually work out.**


	3. (Drax) Yellow, secret, despair, family, reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Two weeks later.....**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **And there's more! Still a day behind.... I'm prepping for London Comic Con, so I have even less time than usual XD But I hope you all enjoy it!! Thank you SO MUCH to Paige+Stratton, Name1, Sinikettu, mitarashi8, AbominableSnowDude, Jillamy, Ragnaropolis, LadyAzure971, WaldosAkimbo, DestielsDestiny, Love-Is-Yondu-Blue, randomnickname, and ship-all-the-ships-I-love for your comments!**

Drax lay awake at night.

Not always, and not for long.

His snores were brassy, thunderous things, of a volume which used to disrupt the bats who nested above his subterranean village. A night-cycle without those snores would be as strange as...

Drax looked at his hands. Like fingers without a palm to attach them to. Although that was a common occurrence on the battle plains, so perhaps it was not altogether strange after all.

Drax wasn't good at metaphors.

He rolled from the bunk, instinctively reaching out to steady the stack. Rocket and Groot shared the bed above, although Groot had been clamoring for his own space, as of late.

Drax supposed that was a necessary part of growing up, in spacer-culture. The child broke away from the parent to live independently. They did not stay to revere their elders for their wisdom and mind them in their dotage.

Drax didn’t fully understand spacer customs, but he supposed not every society could be as civilized as his.

Tonight, his dorm-mates were absent. What they were up to, Drax could not guess. He was too tired for conjecture.

Still, the _Quadrant_ was more than spacious enough to give every Guardian a cabin to themselves, if they so pleased. They only shared dorms out of habit, after spending many months crowded into the _Milano,_ whose hull seemed illogically smaller whenever Drax laid eyes on it.

They’d decoupled from the hospital a week ago, following the recovery of Yondu’s sight. The _Quadrant_ was their home base, and on the whole, the crew were grateful to upscale from a bungalow-sized ship to a shuttle the height of the average tower block.

Drax was perhaps the only soul aboard displeased with their new sleeping arrangements.

Gamora and Mantis had claimed one cabin for themselves. On nights like these, Drax could not do as his emotions willed him and stand over Mantis's bed to ensure that she was safe.

Apparently, Zen Whoberi fostered overzealous notions about what qualified as _creepy_.

Last time Drax tried, a knife pinged off the doorframe by his head. Despite his efforts to console Gamora of his pure intentions (“I only intend to watch her sleep. You need not worry for her virtue. I would not copulate with this scrawny bug-creature if you paid me – she is almost as ugly as you.”) the biolock had been coded so only those of the female biological persuasion could get access.

Drax suspected this was also in a bid to keep out Quill.

Since Udonta awoke and discovered Quill had moved his belongings into the master cabin, the pair had been engaged in a grudge match over which would lay claim to the space.

 _You're not a captain anymore,_ Peter tried, the first day Udonta walked again (one cycle after the Ogords visited; Drax suspected the old pirate made it to his feet out of sheer frustration). _I'm leader, remember? We talked about this!_

 _Still my ship, boy,_ came the reply. _Can't take that from me._

 _No one is trying to_ take _anything from you! For once in your life, can’t you just back down?_

Yondu couldn't – he claimed to be physically incapable of such feats, the factual accuracy of which Drax had his doubts. But he agreed to the compromise that he and Quill would share the cabin.

For some baffling reason, they levelled a secondary caveat: that neither was permitted to have sex in the other's presence.

Prudes.

The Guardians were a strange bunch, sometimes. So Drax mused as he clomped through the corridors, bouncing off the occasional wall. Sleep struck his species like... like a fist to the head, he supposed. It bore a similar state of dizziness, and vision that wobbled when you walked.

What would Kamaria say, if he tried to teach her about metaphors?

How would she fit into the Guardians' puzzle? Would she force herself to stay with them, animosity burgeoning day by day, as Peter forced himself to stay beside Yondu, constantly biting back insults and seething through clenched teeth?

Drax hoped not. His daughter had been well past the cusp of adolescence when Ronan waged his war, filling the skies with the stench of blood. He'd been proud of her, so proud, the first time she organized her own hunt and plodded home, face grim and beautiful as her mother's, an entire auruchs slung over her shoulders.

Drax might not be good at metaphors, but he was very good at 'what ifs'. He stood before the girls' dormitory a moment and allowed himself to picture his daughter meeting Mantis.

When people found out that your species was entirely literal, they often took it to mean that you lacked in imagination. They were wrong. Drax could think up many inventive ways in which he would've hurt Ronan, if given the chance. He could think of many more things he wished he had the chance to show Hovat and Kamaria.

Drax kept walking.

To his surprise, he heard the unmistakable gravel of Udonta’s voice, accompanied by Rocket’s and Groot’s. They were too distorted to make out the words.

Drax found himself drifting closer. He ambled through the _Quadrant's_ inner helix, past the pulsing grav-enhancers that tethered his feet to the nearest solid surface.

“That skeezy horq-slagger! Says he's gonna invite the rest of the band back. Seems to think we oughta have a _party._ ” Udonta’s laugh sounded bitter. “Just like the good ol' days.”

“Thought there was a time when you didn't want nothing more than to go back to them good old days.”

“I am Groot.”

“See? You pretty much said as much, when we was in that cage.”

Rocket had regaled them at length with the tale of his escape from the Ravager stronghold. The story changed with every retelling. The details became more believable in indirect proportion to the amount of liquor diluting Rocket's bloodstream.

But Drax took one lesson from those stories, and that was that somehow, over the course of their murdering spree, Rocket and Udonta had reached an understanding. There was a faint possibility that they actually _liked_ each other.

“When we was in that cage,” Yondu continued, followed by the vicious screech of a lugnut being tightened far past tolerable levels of stress, “I weren't thinkin' straight, you see. I was traumie-tized. Watchin' all my buds be spaced, traitored by my own damn mate...”

“Hey, careful with them rivets! You _want_ to crack her plating before ya blast into hard vac? Stars, Blue. We only just got you out of the first coma.”

Yondu grumbled, but the wails of tortured metal quietened somewhat.

“Like y’all wouldn’t be grateful. Specially Kraglin. This whole crock of shit started with him, and he can’t even be assed to come say hi?”

“I am Groot,” said Groot, into the resultant hush. Rocket's shadow spilled against the far wall of the corridor, magnified several times his size. It inclined its head.

“Agreed. Don't go too harsh on Obfonteri, Blue. You can't expect a dude to never tell you when you’re out of line. ‘Specially if you're boning.”

“Why not?”

“ _Stars_. If I was him, I'd break up with you too.”

“Aw.” Yondu was leering; Drax heard it in his voice. “Ya want a piece of this?”

“Ha-ha,” said Rocket, barging his elbow into Yondu's side. “I want you away on your holiday so you can stop stinking up the ship with your breath.” Pause. “And makin' Quill even pissier than usual. Seriously, I swear you two pick a fight every time you're in the same room. You give him that zune yet?”

Holiday? Drax dug a finger in his ear. Had he heard correctly? Quill hadn't mentioned anything about vacation.

“Naw.” Yondu stood, shadow blacking out the doorway. They were working under close-light, performing final fiddly repairs on the _Milano._

And Rocket was talking about Yondu taking unannounced leave.

Drax didn't like this.

“Y'see,” Yondu continued, after clicking both knees with a cuss. “That weren't Kraglin's to give him in the first place. S'my gift, and I decide when he deserves it.”

Rocket scoffed. The shadows wobbled and flowed together as he shifted their solar-torch to study the next repair along.

“You just don't want to apologize to his face for all the crap ya put him through as a kid.”

“Shaddup.”

The silence stewed a little longer this time. Groot yawned loudly, and Rocket smacked Yondu's nearest body part.

“Quit mopin', drama queen. You'll be on your way in no time. It'll take Quill til midday to realize the ship's gone, so you won't have to deal with his bitching until then. Just. Y'know. Go get space, or closure, or whatever it is you need. But Blue...”

Rocket's stumbling sentences ground to a halt.

“I am Groot.”

“What he say?”

Rocket swallowed dry enough for Drax to hear the crackle as Yondu bent over his work, diligently applying the automatic tightener to each rivet, clamping the wing plates down so not a single sliver remained through which his air supply could creep.

“Come back again, yeah? Kid misses you.”

Groot glared at him. “I am Groot!”

“Okay, okay. I added that last bit. Sorry, little guy. So, uh. What d'you say, Blue? You're gonna stick around a lil' longer next time?”

“Course,” Yondu grunted, as if he couldn't hear that raw note of hope in Rocket's voice. “Gotta make sure Quill don't do nothin' dumb with my galleon.”

Drax hardly thought the _Quadrant_ classed as a galleon; and anyway, it was hypocritical for Yondu to concern himself with how Quill might steer the _Quadrant's_ helm while he himself intended on sailing away in the _Milano._ He thought it prudent not to give that voice.

“Plus,” said Yondu, a little quieter. He switched off the drill. The bit whirled around, revolutions rapidly slowing, going from a high-pitched whine to a wub to a buzz. “Ain't like I got no other home.”

“If this is home, you should not abandon it.”

So much for staying quiet. All three gazes swung to pin him, with varying levels of shock (Rocket) fury (Groot) and eye-rolling from Udonta.

Drax stepped into the light. “Old men are supposed to be wise.”

“I ain't _that_ old.” But his whole face creased when he scowled, which kind of proved Drax's point.

“This is _not wise,_ ” he iterated, in case the point had gotten lost. “Fatherhood is about being there for your children, whenever they need you.”

“That's what I told him,” Rocket said. Yondu directed his sneer to both.

“Quill ain't no kid. He's a grown-ass adult. Look, he left me last time. It's only a matter of time till he does it again. This’s just… me takin' the inishy-tiff.”

“No,” Drax pointed out. “You're taking his ship. And his zune.” His gaze honed on the tuft of orange hair peeking from Yondu's breast pocket. “And his troll doll.”

“I gave him the ship! Zune's mine to give! An’ he put the doll in that damn orb!”

“I thought Ravagers didn't steal from each other?”

Drax hadn't, until this moment, thought Yondu's snarl could get any nastier. Yondu proved him wrong.

“Quill ain't a Ravager no more. I ain't one neither – ain't been in a very long time.”

“Did Ogord not issue you a pardon?”

“I don't fuckin' want it!”

Drax shook his head. He couldn't figure him out. Rocket, Yondu and Groot were all perched on the _Milano's_ elevated wing. Yondu stood to get more of a height advantage, but while the threat display wasn't bad, for a man of his puny stature, the restrained shake in his fists betrayed him.

“Why do you reject that which you most desire?”

Yondu brayed that ugly laugh once more. “You comin' onto me right now, big daddy?”

Drax elected to ignore that, mostly for the sake of his sanity.

“My daughter and my wife are dead.” He strode to the wing, catching its slim trailing edge as if he could hold it back once the thrusters blared and the turbines roared and Yondu completed his final act of self-sabotage. “I would do _anything_ to see them again. Be with them again.”

Yondu's lips drew further off his teeth, revealing arches of diseased blue gum. He hopped off the wing, towards where his discarded coat lay amid Rocket's usual collection of grease rags. He checked the fuel gauge, where the refill pod was suctioned to the engine duct with the aid of several electromagnets.

“Good thing I ain’t a dumb ape like you.”

Drax dismissed the insult. His species descended from the great bipedal lizards of the salt-marsh, not hominoidea.

“The string bean man,” he tried, thinking of how Obfonteri drifted about the ship like a scrap of leather blown on a breeze – yes, that was a good metaphor – during the weeks before Yondu woke, amassing a cache of dead Ravagers in the galley freezers. “He is your lover, is he not?”

Yondu shrugged like it weren't no big deal, though his hands faltered as they unwinched the clamps. The machine gurgled sulkily behind him. He rubbed sweat off his forehead, replacing it with machine oil, and unfurled from his squat to posture at Drax from his full, unimpressive height.

“I let him fuck me now and then, if that's what yer askin'. Y'know. When we need to blow off steam.”

“Blow off steam,” Drax repeated. “Is that a common sexual practice for your species? Or a euphemism? I don't see the appeal.”

“Dude.” Rocket pointed to Groot, who shrugged as if to say _I'm used to it._

“Look.” Yondu strode closer. While he still couldn’t stand for long periods unassisted – mammalian muscles were remarkably pathetic, degrading after a few weeks of bed-rest – he diverted all his willpower into his swagger. 

“I’m leavin’,” he told Drax, breath raking rankly over his face. “Ya really wanna try an’ stop me? Be my guest.”

Drax shook his head at him – at Rocket and Groot for assisting this zany scheme, at the zune clutched in Yondu’s white-knuckled fist and the greasy tuft of orange hair by his collar.

“You are a terrible father.”

Yondu’s grin only grew. “So I’ve been told.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Yondu's way to deal with people hitting too close to the heart? _Turn it into a come-on and try to make them awkward._ Most of the time, it works. Anyway, I love every comment, every kudos. Thank you all!**


	4. (Gamora) Green, smile, passion, collection, first

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **TWO DAYS LATE I'm sorry I'm going to a big con today and preparations (and deadpool!) got in the way. I didn't hit so many of the prompts for this one, unless you use your imagination?**

She found him in the hangar, gates open, the bubble-thin forcefield the only barrier between him and hard-vac. One of Yondu's toys - they were everywhere, plastic glinting under the solars, beady eyes peeping at you from under pillows in the dorms, consoles on the Bridge, the drains in the shower - sat in the empty dock where, until yesterday, the  _Milano_ had swung. Its spring-mounted head bopped about to the buzz of the engines.

Peter looked like he was contemplating following his ship out into the black. But he never knew he was immortal, and now he knew, he wasn’t. Another of life's little ironies.

Gamora stepped up behind him, taking care to make each footfall sound. He knew she approached – there was no jump when she laid her palm on his shoulder, imparting a squeeze which, she hoped, said everything it needed to.

In case it didn't, she added some words as well.

“I'm sorry.”

“You're not the one who owes me an apology.”

Gamora couldn't say much to that, not when she agreed. She stood beside Peter, her hand on the tight-bunched muscle of his shoulder, and together they watched the nebula curl, swaddling the baby stars.

 

* * *

 

 

“I'm sure he'll be back,” she tried, after she'd coaxed him from the hangar to eat. Peter sat at one of the long slop-tables in the canteen. The clatter of his spoon against the bowl echoed around and around the vast room, taking up more space than he did.

If the _Milano_ was too small to house their crew, the _Quadrant_ was far too large. What must it be like for Peter, to walk through halls impregnated by memories, to remember the rowdy clamor and raucous laughter of a hundred Ravagers, all cheerfully pummelling one another for dibs over the last bowl?

The silence must be eating him alive.

Gamora slipped onto the bench beside him. Those ran along either side of the tables in parallel rows. It would've felt regimented if several hadn't been sawn in half, and more sliced to interesting and jaunty angles in order to cram as much seating as possible around the bulging bundle of pipes at the room's center.

That dived down through the floor, parting the grills like lawn around an oak-trunk. It fed scraps into the matter converter and energy back out.

Several Ravagers had been eating during the second mutiny (reverse mutiny? Retaliatory coup? Gamora wasn't sure of the terminology). Their bowls studded the table tops, crusted in place by spilt gruel. Others had been tossed about the canteen as if in a localized gale when Kraglin performed their rough landing planetside.

Gravy dribbled down the walls. It fizzled off the vent ducts and saturated the room, even a month later, with the smell of gamey long-pork. The gristle lumps stuck in place, hardening in shiny pustules, like zits that had yet to be pinched.

All in all, not Gamora's first choice of accommodations. She had to prevent herself from examining anything too closely, from the slimy yellow growth bubbling out of the nearest abandoned tankard, to the tarnish on Peter's spoon as he raised it to his mouth, chewed, swallowed, dropped it and raised it again.

“Udonta will be back,” she told him quietly. “I spoke to Rocket. He said he just needed a holiday.”

Peter snorted. His spoon hit the plastic carton with a clack.

“Of course he talks to Rocket. Asshole. How could he just walk out like that, huh? Leave Groot? Kraglin? Stakar? Everyone who’s been waiting on him to open his eyes?”

_Me?_

Gamora wished she knew how to fix this. Wished there was something, anything she could say to heal this rift.

Hell, if dragging Udonta back by one of the rings punched through his pointy ears would help, she'd do it. But she feared that caging the old blue fool would only make matters worse.

Dammit. She wasn't used to feeling powerless.

“Udonta loves you,” she tried. Peter's fist hit the table.

“Bastard didn't even leave the zune.”

“He still _cares..._ ”

“He can care all he wants! He sure don't act like it. You don't get it, Gamora. All he ever does, all he's ever done, is _hurt_ me. Even when he tries not to!”

Gamora understood that. She understood that very well. What she couldn't comprehend was how and why Peter still gave a shit. The further she strayed from Thanos, the more her affection for him soured.

However, if Peter was convinced there was something here worth fighting for, she would fight beside him. That was what a first mate did.

“We're surrounded by him,” she said. “He isn't the only one who needs a holiday. We should get out, work a job, do something for _us._ ”

Peter shot her a sizzler of a glare. “Oh sure, Gamora. Let's all go on vacation. Only – wait! I forgot! _Yondu stole my M-ship!_ ”

And with that, he threw his empty bowl in the general direction of the matter 'cycler and stomped out.

Gamora sighed. She rested her elbows on the table and her head, just briefly, in her hands.

More messes to clean up. Just what she needed.

 

* * *

 

 

Fact of the matter was, this wasn't about ships stolen and lent and otherwise borrowed. This was about men and their egos, and following on from that, men and their dicks.

The best way to deal with a dick that shoved itself where it wasn't wanted? Cut it off.

Gamora had to take this into her own hands.

She recruited Drax, Rocket, and Mantis to her cause. Groot was involved by proxy; he tended to tag along with the largest group, complaining that he had been left out of the action.

Obfonteri was a lost cause. He was so determined to avoid his ex-captain, friend, compatriot, whatever they'd been, that he spent the last week careening. Most likely he was still out there, tethered with guide ropes like a baby in its bouncer, burning away the jelly-soft parasites that sucked the nutrients from their hull.

It was an important job – left to their own devices, the jellies would leave their plating as washed-out and brittle as ice – but not a particularly time sensitive one. The acid in their secretions took a century to eat through a half-inch of steel. Kraglin wasn't doing this out of necessity.

Did he even know Yondu had gone?

Gamora shook her head. Not her problem. Right now, her problem was a ship brimming with Udonta's shiny collectibles and several fun new opportunities to contract tetanus.

Gamora strode along her line of recruits. They stood slouched to various degrees of attention.

Drax was yawning, Rocket was viciously scratching his bollocks, and if Groot had nostrils, he'd stick a finger up one. Mantis was the only attendee with a straight back and sparkling eyes.

How long that would last after they started cleaning, only time would tell.

“Mantis, you handle the Bridge. Don't touch any of the nav controls – if I hear the engine so much as flutter, I'm coming up there and removing your fingers from your hands.”

Ah. There went the smile. Much better.

“Rocket. You and Groot handle the hangars.”

That job would take longest. Assigning it to the two members with the shortest arms was cruel, even by her standards.

But they assisted Yondu in his escape. They deserved everything they got.

“And Drax.” She paused before him, smiling cold. “The bogs.”

He slumped. “Why do _I_ have to clean the lavatories?”

“Because you're the only one in this room capable of flushing turds large enough to block a Ravager-grade matter converter,” came Rocket's pithy reply. Drax folded his meaty arms.

“And what will _you_ be doing, Gamora?”

“I've got the hardest job of all.” Gamora flicked her hair back, visualizing the final result. Her masterpiece. Guaranteed to make Peter smile and piss Yondu off. Ergo, _perfect._

“I have to convince Admiral Ogord that _this_ is in his best interests.”

 

* * *

 

 

The way to any man's heart was through his stomach, and the way to any man's wallet was through his wife. Or, more specifically in this case, his ex.

Gamora entered the last of Aleta's com-coordinates, tapping the broadcast button to catapult her ping into cyberspace. She set the holo-projector on the floor before her, and patiently waited for the static to clear.

“Good morning,” she said, once it had done. The image wavered – or perhaps that was just liquor fumes. 

A groan. The lump shifted, raised, parted its lank web of hair.

“Fuck off,” it slurred. “I've already told you, I don't take no unso... unsolicited marketin'  _shit_. You can shove your stars-damned  _hard-vac_   _breach insurance_ up your ass, and... Y'know what? If you're still on the line in  _nought-point-two_ seconds, I triangulate your position and do it for you. Free of fuckin' charge.”

Gamora blinked. Perhaps it would be more prudent to approach Stakar directly. This woman was tipsy, insane, or quite possibly both.

“I'm sorry to disturb you.” She made to terminate the call.

“No. Wait. Wait...” A hand extracted itself from the mound of crusty green leather. It waved a bottle – empty, although whether the contents had been sloshed or swallowed, Gamora couldn't tell. “You're that green chick. Friend of Yondu's boy.”

Not how she wanted to be known. Nevertheless, it was better than  _daughter of Thanos._ Gamora decided she could live with it.

“That's why I'm calling you, actually. Yondu.”

“Hell.” Ogord's glower darkened faster than a collapsing star. “What's that orloni-dicked _fzkor-_ for-brains done now?”

Gamora told her. Aleta sobered with every word.

“Damn,” she said eventually. “Well, I sure hope you don't expect me to fly in and twist his ear. Don’t get me wrong - I'd be happy to. But the boy ain't been returnin’ my calls.”

“No.” Gamora leaned towards the cam-disc. Her smile was whip-thin and deadly as the rest of her. 

She thought of bust Walkmen and absent Zunes and broken families, and the lengths she would go to hear Peter hum  _Burning Love_  again. 

“I've got something far better planned.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thanks to everyone who leaves kudos/comments. Seriously. And notes on tumblr!**


	5. (Nebula) Blue, quote, death, food, stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A few weeks later....**

Nebula languished for most of her life in a cage of her father's devising. She would rather not die in another.

Her cell mate seemed to share her concerns.

“Well, this is a crock of bilgesnipe shit,” said Udonta, as if the universe might overhear, agree, and release them with a sincere written apology from management. “We're gettin' outta here. Any bright ideas, sparky?”

Nebula didn't move from her position: slouched with her back to the wall, arms looped over one knee. Light drooled into their cell. The forcefield distorted her view of the brig and she found herself running mental diagnostics on her optics, although a quick self-repair scan proved that they operated at optimum functionality.

“Not unless your arrow has come online in the five minutes since you last asked.”

Udonta squeezed his eyes shut as if trying to pass a difficult bowel movement. Nebula could slow her metabolism at will, and they had yet to use the bucket left crudely on the floor between them. It had been a whole solar cycle since their capture, however – which perhaps accounted for Udonta's mounting lust for freedom.

Before she could err on the side of precaution and switch off her olfactory sensors, his craggy face sagged and the light died from his implant.

“Nope. I got nothin'. Still an old man without his magic stick.”

He sounded a touch disgruntled about that. Nebula changed the topic.

“At the very least, we will die quickly. I am a war criminal, charged with enabling Ronan's fascism and almost costing the alliance their foolish treaty. You are a petty thief, who is no doubt reaping the consequences of his actions. The Kree pride themselves on their mercy. It will be painless.”

Yondu's laugh rung hollow. “Only thing I stole from the Kree was myself. Caused a lotta trouble afterwards, but I ain't never traded in Kree stock. Matter of moral principle, that.”

“You were a Ravager. What do you know about _moral principle?_ ”

Udonta's expression darkened. “I was fuckin' property, that's what I was. You really think they's gonna kill me quick?”

There were too many sob stories in this galaxy for Nebula to care about any besides her own. She suspected Udonta counted on it.

“No,” she said, shutting her eyes. She flexed the foot on her outstretched leg; out, in, out, in, limbering up the mechanical ankle complex. “They will most likely extract your entrails through your scrotum and display your corpse as a warning to other slaves.”

“Great.” Yondu threw up his hands. “Just flarkin' great. _Perfect_. Exactly how I planned to end my vacation.”

That made Nebula frown. “Vacation?”

“Yeah. Didn't give 'em no worry date neither, so there ain't nobody looking for me. If you was hoping the Guardians'd come runnin' to our rescue, you might be a bit disappointed.”

Nebula wasn't sure what she'd been hoping for on that front. She and Gamora left things so very fraught between them, that old abscess of hurt and blame and _sisterhood_ lanced but not yet drained.

“Plus,” Yondu continued, rolling his weight uneasily from one boot to the other. “Didn't exactly get the chance to go potty before I got chucked in here, so unless ya want me to offend yer delicate sensibilities, sparky...”

That settled it. Nebula stood, unfolding in a limber chorus of unoiled cybernetics.

“We're getting out of here,” she said.

Yondu cocked an brow. “Soundin' a lil' creaky there, girlie.”

“Don't call me girlie. Or sparky. Or any other ridiculous nickname you have no doubt thought up. Now come here.”

The eyebrow elevated another fraction of an inch. “Scuse me?”

Nebula snapped impatient fingers, pointing in front of her. She didn't have all day, especially not if Udonta's colon was reaching critical capacity. “I need to hit you.”

“Wow. Them sensibilites really are delicate, huh?”

Ugh. He was incorrigible. He deserved everything the Kree had in store. But Nebula had a mission to get back to, one against a enemy that posed a far greater threat than a bunch of Hala loyalists.

If she couldn't break from this cell, what prayer did she have against Thanos?

Nebula wasn't used to team ops. She certainly wasn't used to explaining her plans. But she did, to some degree, require Udonta's cooperation.

“They won't open the cell without a reason,” she told him. “One of those reasons being violence between the prisoners.”

Udonta caught on at long last. He took a cautious step to the rear, boot knocking the bucket.

“You realize I ain't got none of yer crazy super-strength, girlie? You punch me at yer hardest, I ain't gonna be doin' no running for a very long time.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

Udonta raised his finger, opened his mouth and shut it again. “No. Hell. Jus' be gentle with me, girlie. You ain't the only one what creaks in the mornin'.”

Nebula rolled her eyes. She pulled her punch enough that she didn't break his jaw – although she suspected she would shortly regret it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Wait – hold up a mo.”

Nebula, stomping down the corridor with the guards' necroblasters slung over her shoulder, two pistols on each hip, and spare plas-pods and battery packs looping her waist, did so.

“Do you not understand the meaning of haste, you blue buffoon?”

“Takes one to know one,” Udonta panted. He sported a new black eye and a fattening bruise on his chin, but Nebula found his crossed legs rather more concerning. He gestured at a panel in the wall, marked with a glowing symbol that Nebula's translator informed her meant _biological waste._ “Give me fifteen.”

“ _Fifteen?_ How long does it take you to...”

“One, I'm old, two, you don't want to know the answer, and three, I got a plan.” Yondu's grin was nothing short of chilling. “This is a Varricus-class merchant frigate. They don't got no slaves to mop up their mess. I'm leavin' these bastards a message they won't forget.”

“Disgusting,” came Nebula's verdict. “I will take no part in your foul rituals, Ravager. You're on your own.”

Still, this was Yondu's business – Yondu's _revenge_ , no matter how ridiculous. She wouldn't talk him out of it. If she had the chance to show Thanos just what she thought of him, would she not jump at the opportunity?

Well. Perhaps not in such a crass fashion. But she might be tempted, just a little.

Yondu opened the panel. He shot her a jaunty salute and sauntered in to ruin a Kree's day.

Nebula shook her head after him.

“I'm not waiting,” she said as the panel whooshed shut. Then, to the galaxy at large: “He had better not think that I'm waiting.”

She meant it too. After a generous ten seconds (just in case this was Udonta's idea of a joke) she continued her one-woman charge for the escape pods.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Three days later, a Luphomoid walked into a bar.

The chatter eddied around her, a white-water froth of meaningless gossip, inane blather, haggling over the price of cell-grown meat versus produce from the hydroponics gardens, the occasional accusation of infidelity and a muttered invocation of a local deity whose name Nebula did not care to learn, but whose prayer practice seemed to involve a mantra-like repetition of the words 'five bronze scrip for one fuckin' sandwich?'

Come to think about it, that man might be part of the third group. Nebula sipped her ale in silence. Or at least, she did until Udonta collapsed on the chair beside her.

“Barman'll have spit in that,” he said conspiratorially, pointing to the scuzzy floaters batting against the tankard's side. “This's a, uh, X-xandar-affiliate colony. Don't much like blue skin.”

Nebula shrugged, taking another long draft. Her stomach didn’t take ‘iron’ figuratively; Thanos had made adjustments to ensure she wouldn’t suffer from poisoning. “It's still cleaner than the water.”

Yondu laughed like she’d told a joke rather than just pointing out a fact. He even clutched his side – although that could have more to do with the ragged slice there, which had cut through flesh as well as leather, leaving a leaking gouge brimming with as much bacteria as the rest of him.

His arrow was back on his hip though, which meant he hadn’t only lagged behind to block the Kree ship's biowaste converter. Nebula nodded to it.

“It’s active.”

Yondu pressed his wound harder. Dirty blood leaked over his fingers; Nebula’s nose crinkled at the smell.

“Mm-hm. Couldn’t… couldn’t break it again. Rat’d be. Fuckin’ pissed. Shit.”

Nebula sipped her drink. She observed him over the tankard’s greasy lip. Blue skin glistening with sweat, chest heaving choppily, eyes far too dull.

Three solar cycles since they decamped from the Kree ship. More than enough time for a wound to go sour.

It was an ignoble death, but that hardly mattered. Nebula knew better men who’d died worse.

“Why did you follow me?” she asked. “I’m no medic.”

She needed to snip this… whatever-Udonta-might-think-it-was in the bud. Just because they’d collaborated to take down a megalomaniacal god, then again to escape execution on Hala, it didn’t make them associates. Certainly not _friends._

Yondu bowed over the table. His rank breath added to the soupy atmosphere: the liquor fumes and halitosis of a few hundred bar patrons, all of whom sneered at the pair of them like they were gum scraped from the bottom of a beer coaster.

“Yeah, an’… an’ ain’t no apothecary here that’ll fork over medibeads for a Blue. Don’t matter how much I pay ‘em. An’… an’ I gotta boy waitin’ for me to give him this…” He slapped the table, a black oblong visible between his clammy fingers. “He’s gonna be so fuckin’ _pissed_ if I die before he can punch me out for stealin’ his ship.”

Nebula swilled her swill around the mug and shaved her foam moustache. “You’re babbling, Udonta. I haven’t the first clue what you’re talking about. I’ll ask you again, assuming you are coherent enough to understand me – why did you come to me? For help? Or just to be put out of your misery, before the flies lay their eggs in your stomach and devour you from the inside?”

Yondu went impossibly paler. “Stars, sparky. Ya… ya gotta real way with words.”

“Don’t call me sparky.”

Yondu exercised his selective hearing. “Sparky, look.” He pushed the metal rectangle closer, sticking and starting on the plastic table-top. “Yer gonna need my boy an’ his crew for yer fight against Thanos, yeah?”

Nebula ground her molars. As much as she wanted to insist that she could handle it alone, there were times when logic had to trump pride. Thanos’s impending murder was one of them. It would take everything Nebula had, everything all of them had combined, to bring him down. And even then, the odds weren’t in their favor.

Yondu didn’t give her a chance to confirm it. He just wheezed out his last words, chipped nails scratching the tabletop. “Give this to my boy, s’all I ask. Might en…encourage ‘em to help ya.”

Nebula eyed the thing. _Z-U-N-E,_ she read, translator glitching as it scanned the primitive Terran glyphs.

“Very well.” She was willing to play courier, if it would ensure she had allies in the upcoming fight. She made to take it. Yondu grabbed her wrist.

“An’… an’ tell him the ship gotta bit dinged, but it ain’t my fault. Tell him I was plannin’ on comin’ home, I just needed some… Huh.” His grin flashed dazedly. “Home.”

Nebula concentrated on prying herself loose from the sweaty death grip. “I’ll give him the Zoo-nay. Your drivel is not worth the space it would take up in my memory banks.”

Yondu’s skin was slick with fever. That should’ve made it easier for Nebula to eel loose, but her metal arm sported a number of ridges that increased the traction.

“Tell the Rat I’m real grateful for the arrow, an’ for lendin’ me Quill’s ship. An’ the Twig – nah, the Branch. Yeah. He’s a good kid. Tell ‘im I said that, and that I hope he gives Quill hell. Makes up for all the shit that boy put me through, y’know?”

His chuckle sounded like it hurt him.

“Kraglin… Tell him I miss his stupid face almost as much as I miss him lickin’ my bits, an’… an’ _yeah,_ I’m a lil’ pissed about the mutiny, but I’m more pissed he didn’t come see me when I had fuck all else to do but lay in a hospital bed… Bet Stakar woulda quit visitin’ if I were ridin’ dick every time he dropped by.”

That was far more about his sexual preferences than Nebula either wanted or needed to know. Before she could scrub of the last minute of data from her memory banks. Yondu shook his head, narrowly avoiding overbalancing.

“No wait. Don’t mention the part about me bein’ pissed at him. Idjit gets so mopey… Uh. Stakar. And ‘Leta. Tell ‘em… tell ‘em they ain’t allowed to forgive me til’ I forgive myself, an’ as… as I’m gonna die like a fuckin’ dog in a back alley somewhere, that ain’t happenin’ any time soon. They best give my men a funeral though. Idjits, followin’ me into exile like that… Deserve better than the Black, y’know?”

Nebula had, by this point, resigned herself to listening until Udonta’s encroaching death caught up with him. She could speed the process along a little, but she doubted her sister’s new family would appreciate it. She rested her forehead on her spare hand instead.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. As I have mentioned.”

Yondu made the Herculean effort of focusing on her.

“Yer sister!” he exclaimed, releasing her hand – finally! – so that he could stab his grubby blue finger at her face. “Tell her… Tell Greenie she best be good to my boy. Only hit ‘em when he deserves it, else I’mma be hauntin’ the whole damn lot of ‘em, an’…”

That was it. Nebula screeched her chair back. She unfastened the pouch from her belt, upended it over the table, and pushed the three bacta-filled marbles towards him.

“Tell them yourself,” she growled.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Medibeads were useful little things – a portable supply of bacta that would repair any wound it encountered. The drawback was that they didn’t contain anaesthetic.

Nebula supposed that if Yondu had come to her for help, he must be delirious enough not to need it.

No sense leaving him here to be gutted by the next bastard with a grudge against their skin-color. Especially as that was most of them.

This station had been obliterated by Kree forces once upon a year – one of many statement-detonations, made to convince the Xandarians of Hala's willingness to strike at civilian targets. It was being rebuilt, although after Ronan’s assault on Xandar (in which Nebula's part had not been forgotten) funds were lower than ever. You could only flash so many pox-smeared refugee children over newsboards before you over-saturated people’s empathy.

The war might be over, but signing a treaty was easy. Undoing a century of night raids and strafing runs, abuse and neglect... Wasn’t.

With that in mind, Nebula heaved Yondu’s limp arm over her shoulder and started towards his ship. It didn’t take her long to spot it.

“Ah.”

Yondu roused from where he’d been lubricating her shoulder gears with his drool. “Huh?”

“You said your ship got, and I quote, ‘a little dinged’.”

Yondu squinted blearily at the plume. “It weren’t smoking when I left it.”

“The locals probably torched it.”

Nebula weighed up her options. None were appealing. But this wasn’t about her, or her desire to preserve her own space, free from meaningless drivel or – worse – _banter._

This was about her end goal. Killing Thanos.

Every ally was a good ally against such a powerful foe. And Yondu, when fully-powered and not caught off-guard by a headshot from behind, might be a valuable asset.

Quite simply, he wasn’t yet permitted to die. Which meant Nebula had to take him with her.

Yondu struggled as she dragged him away. He wasn’t the largest guy, but his overlay of meat and muscle would make carrying him a daunting task for any Luphomoid not in possession of cybernetic enhancements.

Nebula resisted the temptation to heave him over her shoulder. Three medibeads had used up her entire stock; she didn’t want to reopen his wound.

“No – wait. Girlie, thas my boy’s ship. I told him I’d bring her back to him. I gotta…”

“How are you supposed to fly it if it isn’t spaceworthy?”

Yondu wiggled with the sort of demented fury reserved for orloni in traps. “I don’t care! That ship's Quill’s fuckin’ baby!”

Nebula couldn’t have him struggling the whole way down the dock. It was unsightly.

“Would he rather have the ship, or you alive?” she tried, because that sounded like the sort of sentimental twaddle that got idiots like Udonta to buck up and take note. Udonta gave her a flat stare.

“You’ve met me. ‘Pparently I’m a lot easier to deal with when I’m dead.”

Nebula conceded the point.

Disturbing the peace only added a misting of rocket fuel to their bonfire of crimes – chief among them being the color of their skin. Narrow glares bored into them from every angle. Nebula didn’t have time to hash this out with Udonta – she needed to blast off before the mob gathered enough pitchforks from the local hydroponics plant to be a viable threat.

Only one thing for it. Unfortunately.

“I’ll use the tow-rope.”

Yondu showed his gratitude by collapsing on the lone bunk in her ship, leaking dirt from his leathers. Nebula stood over him a moment, Zoo-nay a cold burn in her flesh-and-blood hand. She dropped it on his chest, startling his eyelids open.

“H-huh? Wha’? Are we there yet?”

“I’m not flying you and your pathetic ship all the way back to the Guardians,” Nebula told him. She nodded to the Zoo-nay. “I’m certainly not your errand girl.”

Yondu struggled to sit, smearing grime all over the thermoregulation blanket. He smelt like a garbage bag that’d burst in the heat of the vents on Knowhere, but at very least, Nebula’s olfactory processor could isolate the sharp, clean tang of bacta among the body odor, old leather, and decay.

“What’chu want then?”

Ah, good. He was lucid enough to strike a bargain. And even if he wasn’t… Well, Nebula wasn’t above taking advantage.

“Information. You’ve worked for Thanos before.”

“Through the Broker.”

“But still. If you survived at the head of your band of goons for so long, I assume you’re either improbably lucky or a lot smarter than you pretend.”

Yondu shrugged. “Bit of both, to be honest.”

“And smart people,” Nebula continued, guiding the mag-locking tow rope into place via a projection on her nav-screen, “don’t take jobs unless they know what they’re getting into. In exchange for those medibeads, I expect every scrap of what you’ve learnt about Thanos.”

“And what about the tow? What’ll that cost me?”

A frisson jittered up her spine. Pure pleasure. It’d been while since she nourished her sadistic side – the fight with the Kree had been over so _quickly_ , and Udonta right now was too pathetic to make torturing him fun.

At least, not physically.

“You have to make up with Gamora’s crew. And your old Ravager allies. We cannot let old grudges divide us in the war on Thanos.”

To her disappointment, Yondu didn’t start begging for mercy. He peeled the Zoo-nay from his greasy leathers, dabbing it ineffectually on his scarf.

“Some vacation this is turnin’ into.”

The electromagnet at the end of the tow rope charged, plugging onto the flat plate on the _Milano’s_ aft. That was pretty much the only part of it that had been spared, even before the fire. Yondu'd entered this bay at ram-speed. When it came to arguments between M-ship nosecones and space stations, the nosecones rarely won.

Nebula swung herself onto the pilot’s chair, tapping her nails on the thruster control. “Well, Udonta? Do we have a deal?”

Udonta mulled it over – that or he’d fallen unconscious again. When Nebula checked she found him hunched over his wound, one hand keeping the bacta packed inside while the other traced the flame shape, stitched a little wonky over his heart.

“I ain’t facin’ the lot of ‘em at once,” he said eventually. “I can only deal with one cryin’ goober at a time. Else I’ll snap and whistle, and that’ll only make shit worse.”

Udonta held a high opinion of himself if he thought he warranted tears. Personally, Nebula was still tossing up whether this entente was worth the extra fuel quarts.

“Pick them off one by one. I don’t care, so long as it gets done.”

“Yes ma’am, sure ma’am, thank you ma'am. Anythin’ else, ma’am?”

Nebula activated their thrusters. “Will you be this facetious for the entire trip?”

“Nah, facetious is what I smeared all over that Kree bathroom.”

Oh, by the _stars_.

“New rule,” Nebula snarled. “No talking.”

Yondu shrugged. He collapsed on his back, rubbing his healing side. He popped in the Zoo-nay’s earbuds, and started humming enthusiastically to every song, taking care to never sing a word.

Nebula dampened her audial processors. She regretted this already.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Yet another time skip! Sorry. But I hope you enjoyed this! You'll find out what Gamora and Aleta did next chapter....**


	6. (Kraglin) Violet, desire, ravager, gift, teacher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **CONTAINS SEXUAL REFERENCES AND NON-EXPLICIT KRAGDU SMUT. I've seen T-rated fics with this level of sexual content before, so I'm tentatively keeping the rating where it is, especially as the focus of this fic is very much on the plot and character and I don't want to be misleading. If anyone feels strongly that it should be bumped up, let me know!**

The universe trundled on. It had a knack for doing that.

Kraglin didn’t.

He hit the jellies with another gush of flame. The repainting sloop finished its rounds last cycle. The _Quadrant_ wasn't the largest fish in these waters, but she was on her way, and it took Stakar's one-man dinghy a solid three solars to complete the task to Quill's satisfaction.

That meant three solars of squirting blue and orange magnetic-paint onto the _Quadrant's_ surface, generating an artificial atmospheric field until it dried, then moving on to the next square ten feet. It also meant three solars where Kraglin had been trapped inside, forced to witness the desecration of his captain's legacy and completely unable to stop it.

What use did Yondu have for a legacy, Quill wanted to know, seeing as he wasn’t actually dead? He didn’t want them to fuck with his ship, he shouldn’t have run away.

He certainly shouldn’t have stolen Peter’s.

 _Mutiny,_ Kraglin wanted to protest, except Yondu weren’t captain no more. Plus, Aleta assured them, according to that old and revered Ravager by-law of _finders keepers,_ Yondu Udonta resigned his governance over this ship the moment he left it. He deserved everything he got.

Kraglin pumped more gas through the nozzle of his flamethrower. He turned a slow cartwheel past the last of the vac-dwelling parasite colony that had burrowed into their hull.

This spring cleaning was about more than stopping Groot from contracting fungi whenever he visited the shower block. It was an exorcism, banishing the dirt and grime from the Guardians’ past. As dirt and grime was all Kraglin had ever known, he wasn't sure what would be left.

But he had to admit, sailing under the keel, his safety rope an umbilical cord that drifted through the vacuum behind him, that the new color scheme weren’t _awful_. It was eye-catching at least – not that he’d ever admit as much to Peter’s face.

 _Zzp-zzp-zzp._ A comm watch couldn't shriek in hard-vac, so they stippled your wrists with electric instead.

Kraglin winced. He glanced down, rolling up his sleeve beneath the glittery force field. His watch twinkled merrily up at him, nestled against his forearm hair.

_Cap'n calling._

Hell.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“The hell do you mean, _you want to take a holiday_?”

This was the bit Kraglin hated. He could con a Len out of their life savings, haggle his way through the bodegas on A’askavaria for days on end. But could he lie to people he gave a shit about?

Apparently not.

Kraglin gazed at Quill with mounting desperation. The message had been very clear on that front. _Come alone._

“I, I mean,” he stuttered, glancing around Peter’s new digs. The Terran had taken sole possession of the cabin, which meant Kraglin had to restrain himself from reminiscing over that time cap’n pinned him against that wall, knelt before him on that auruchs-pelt rug, lounged on that chair with spread legs and a cute lil' plug that matched his eyes...

Funny how the memory of a man imprinted itself. Yondu’s dent on the mattress, gradually filled out by Quill’s. Yondu’s smell, a sour undertone to Peter’s favorite cologne, like milk spilt in the corner and left to rot.

Fading, all of it fading.

But, like how you could fold a square of leather smaller and smaller but never make it disappear, that smell would never quite vanish completely.

No wonder Gamora refused to move in.

“I just want some space,” said Kraglin finally, ducking so he didn’t have to look Peter in the eye. “A lot’s changed on this ship, and I just. Y’know. Been scorchin’ parasites like it’s a regular cycle.”

“Is this about the re-paint? I know it started off as a petty thing, but I think it’s helping all of us to feel like this ship is _ours._ Plus, we do have a baby tree running about. I can’t believe we didn’t kiddie-proof the place sooner – but yeah. I’m sorry, man. I know how much this old hunk of junk means to you.”

Not all that much, to be honest. Spacers were like folks who lived in the shadow of a volcano. All settlements were only temporary. A ship might give you a lease of life in hard-vac, but sooner or later, the black took back what was owed.

But Quill always did have weird ideas about _home._

“Yer in charge; you do what ya wanna. But…” Kraglin hadn’t wanted to use this trump card. Felt like a shame to their memory, when they were all laid out in cold storage and Kraglin was running off after his cap’n. “Ship’s a lot bigger than it used to be.”

Peter squinted at him. “The _Quadrant’s_ literally a quarter the size of the _Eclector._ ”

“An’ there’s only seven of us livin’ in it.”

There it was. The slow realization.

_All my friends’re dead._

“Oh,” said Peter. He reached up as if he was going to stroke the curve of his headphones or toy with the buds of his Zune. Finding neither, his hand faltered, and finally settled on the back of his neck. “Uh. Yeah. Vacation. Can see why that might help.”

Great. Satisfied with Quill’s blessing, Kraglin sloped for the door. A palm dropped on his shoulder before he made it halfway.

“Do you blame me?”

Kraglin didn’t need to ask what the brat was on about.

Orb. Ronan. Four million units, and a helluva lot of Ravager dead, their smoke trails seeding the clouds over Xandar, falling in poisoned rain.

All of it for nothing.

“Yeah,” he said, still facing away. He heard Peter’s lips part; didn’t need to look at his face to imagine it crumpling. “You, cap’n, Stakar. Taserface. Ronan. Ego. Thanos.” His throat stretched around his gulp. “Me. Ain’t none of us done right by them what’re dead.”

They all had a lot to answer for, that was for sure.

“You hated me,” said Quill quietly. “When I was a kid. Didn’t you?” He took the lack of a response as a confirmation. “Cause I kept hogging Yondu’s attention and getting into stupid situations where he’d risk his life to save me.”

No point denying it. Kraglin nodded.

“Do you still?”

Bane of his life, the squalling Terran brat cap’n unloaded on him. Always crying, laughing, singing, chattering, asking dumb questions and spinning tall tales. For a whole stars-damned decade, Kraglin had been subject to the non-stop Quill channel: all Quill, all the time.

Kraglin wasn’t much of a party-guy. He valued his silence. Wherever Quill went, trouble went too, and silence grew very hard to come by.

And inevitably, where Quill went, Yondu followed. It nearly killed him on Ego’s planet. One day soon, it would finish the job.

“I dunno.”

It was honest, at least. He hoped Quill valued that.

Quill breathed out steadily.

“Okay,” he said. When Kraglin peeked over his shoulder, he found a sad smile awaiting him. “Okay. Whatever you’re looking for on your, uh, vacation, I hope you find it. And – and Kraglin?”

Kraglin, eager to be underway, paused in the doorway, the automated panel whooshing out and back in again. “Yeah?”

Peter stood in the cabin where Kraglin and Yondu shared damn near everything, now re-outfitted with three garish Terran posters, a stereo, and some weird mobile Rocket looted from a junk stall. It spun overhead, turning gently in the breeze from the ancient, rust-speckled fans.

“Tell that old coot I want my Zune.”

Busted. But Quill hadn't ordered him to drag Yondu back or demanded to tag along. Seemed like the kid was finally growing up.

Kraglin thumped his chest, bam-bam, the beat of a Ravager heart.

“Yessir,” he said.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The hell did it have to be a club?

Yondu _knew_ Kraglin hated clubs. Yet here he was: a gangly white weed who lingered at the edge of the dancefloor like a bad smell.

He was given the same sort of berth. The tale of what happened to the red outlaw crew – mutinied, got trounced for it, all of them dead but two – had been ground through the rumor mill so many times that Kraglin didn’t recognize the end product. But it kept the crowd away from him, so he couldn’t complain.

He slouched into a booth on the club’s far side. Yondu’s message hadn’t been all that specific. Just coordinates then two words: _come alone._ And, Kraglin realized now, he’d been so buzzed to see his cap’n again that he forgot the very real possibility that this could be a trap.

Anyone could’ve got hold of cap’n’s comm watch – guy’d been known to forget his own arrow after a drink. It’d be easy to lure Kraglin out to this place, surrounded by so much booming music and whirling bodies that a knife could glide between ribs unnoticed.

Kraglin’s eyes thinned. He examined the dancers more carefully. A few looks shot his way, but all slithered off again, swept away by the blizzard of color and noise.

And then? Then, he saw him.

Lights gushed in a neon hurricane. There, at its eye, stood Yondu.

_Cap’n._

Yondu walked closer. Leisurely – very leisurely. He took his own sweet time, his own sweet pace, until he finally stood over him, soused in moonshine-fumes and lust, and pushed Kraglin’s sweaty fringe from his eyes.

“Hi,” Kraglin croaked.

Yondu’d stripped down to his pants. His scarf divided his blue face from his scarred chest. A bandage striped his side, drawing Kraglin’s stare, but Yondu gripped his chin and turned his face up before he could start on the _who did this_ and _who do I gotta kill._

“Eyes on me.”

Fuck. Voice like smoke. Eyes like fire.

The string joining Kraglin’s cock to his abdomen lit like a fuse, yanking everything taut.

“Sir…”

“Shaddup.”

Yondu spilled forwards, a warm blue lahar. He filled Kraglin’s lap so his purr rumbled through them both together, husky and leonine-deep. Violet strobes licked his broad shoulders, his chubby ass, the little belly that rubbed on Kraglin's trembling palms.

“Ain’t fair,” Yondu said. Kraglin decided this meant the _shaddup_ order had been revoked.

“What ain’t?”

“This.” Yondu patted his pocket, an earbud just visible, the zune vacuum-packed by skintight leather. “Got one brat a present an’ forgot to give my other boy some sugar.”

Kraglin grimaced. “I know you’ve just, uh, started comin’ to terms with the whole Quill bein’ yer son shtick, but...”

“Aw.” Yondu rocked, ostensibly to get comfortable. Kraglin didn’t buy it for a second. He became painfully, dizzyingly aware that there were two layers and no lightyears between them. “Don’t wanna call me daddy?”

…And there it went again.

Kraglin pulled a face. “Way to kill the mood.”

“Hey, you teck-nick-ly ain’t supposed to call me _cap’n_ no more. Scuse me for tryin’ to spice things up.”

Idiot.

The violet lights swung around them, melding Kraglin’s white fingers into the blue of Yondu’s side. “Don’t need no spice,” Kraglin muttered, kneading an inch above the bandage. “Just you.”

“Aw. You gettin’ sentimental on me?”

This was what Yondu _did._ He made things difficult. Made you afraid to love him, ashamed of it even. Always testing, always pushing, always prepared for you to walk away.

And they all had, one after the next. Stakar. Quill. Kraglin.

Coming back again, that was the tough part.

“Yeah.” Kraglin bit his lip. Then, after a moment of indecision, surged forwards and bit Yondu’s instead. “Fuck, I missed you.”

“Dumbass,” growled Yondu, even as he licked Kraglin's teeth. “Yer the one what didn’t visit me in hospital.”

“Couldn’t face ya. Not after everythin’ I did.”

If not for the mutiny they could’ve left Taserface on Berhert, an arrow hole adding to his mess of a mug. Rocket could’ve dropped Ego’s name, Yondu could’ve flown to Quill’s rescue. They’d have had time for Kraglin to hunt out a few spare vac-suits. Time to prepare for an assault on a God…

Yondu cupped his face between rough blue palms. “Woulda forgiven ya,” he said gruffly. “Just mighta had you suck me off a coupla times first.”

Like that was punishment. “Point was, you was ready to let the past lie, but I weren’t.”

Yondu scooted back – Kraglin very almost protested, until blunt fingers hooked on the zip-pull on his fly. “An’ now?”

Kraglin gulped. He jerked his chin at the dance floor. The music boomed like misfiring thrusters, bass wubs reflecting off the walls. Bodies writhed – men, women, others, all – not ten feet away, glittering with sequins and bottles of technicolor hooch.

“Perhaps, uh, we oughta book a room...”

“Nah. Here’s fine.” Yondu canted against him again, his bulk a screen between Kraglin and the crowd. “Asked you a damn question. You ready to forgive yourself yet, Obfonteri?”

Something lurked behind that mocking tone. Something so damn desperate it hurt Kraglin to the wizened husk of his soul.

He leant back when Yondu shoved him, sinking onto the cushions. He held his captain by the hips as he rolled over him, grinding down like he was trying to push them together, find the angle where they slotted into a single thing.

“Think so,” he whispered over the throb of the music, the whirl of the purple lights, the buzz of Yondu’s zipper, the tattoo of his own pounding heart.

_Don’t worry, boss. Lemme teach ya. I’ll show you how it’s done._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Utterly disgusting. You could at least have fastened your pants after you finished fornicating.”

Kraglin groaned, cracking his crusty eyes. That lasted for all of two seconds.

 _Light_. Far too much of it.

He slammed them shut again.

Everything _itched._ Dry sweat and worse, glued to his skin beneath his leathers. He could smell his own body – which, considering how desensitized his nose was from a decade of cohabitation with Yondu, meant things must be pretty fucking dire, especially in the pit-region. Who knew? Perhaps, after they got back to the _Eclector,_ he’d bring his monthly shower forwards a week.

First though: where was he?

This time Kraglin opened his eyes more slowly, one hand up to defend against the glare. He found stained cushions beneath him. The faded velvet was bald in patches, like Gef after he caught the mange. The air frothed with fumes: stale booze and cum.

“Mornin’, sparky,” said Yondu from close by. 

“Do not call me sparky.”

Kraglin felt dopily for a knife, just in case Yondu wanted him to kill the intruder. Yondu squeezed his wrist to stop him. “Now, now. Baby’s sleepin’.”

“I _came here,_ ” continued the woman, her huffy voice ringing strangely familiar, “to warn you that you have been reported for public indecency. Assuming you want to continue with this _reconciliation conga,_ getting arrested isn’t going to help.”

Yondu heaved a sigh but acknowledged the point. “Okay, okay. C’mon Krags. Up and at ‘em.”

Kraglin dredged from his doze. His captain was still tucked against him, Kraglin’s arms looped over his shoulders like the straps in a red leather safety harness. His cheek squashed against Yondu’s nape. His stubble grated the skin beneath Yondu's scarf, obscuring the collar scar (one of many Kraglin Didn't Ask About) with navy-blue scrimshaw.

Yondu didn’t seem to mind. “Wakey-wakey,” he crooned. Kraglin mumbled something nonsensical and hugged him tighter.

Their guest lost patience. She stalked forwards and shoved an icy metal hand down Kraglin’s collar.

Kraglin yelped. Then clocked the identity of his attacker and yelped again.

“ _Nebula_?”

She sneered at him. “You have a zipper, Ravager. I suggest you use it.”

“Uh – oh! Hell. Uh, yeah. Yep, right away.”

Yondu sniggered as Kraglin shrunk in his seat and did his best not to nick any parts cap’n would miss. It was as he was avoiding Nebula’s judgmental eyes that his own gaze swam to the gash on Yondu’s side.

He grabbed one of the twenty hilts stashed throughout his uniform, and this time he was too fast for Yondu to catch him.

“Did she” –

“She,” said Nebula, folding her arms, “saved this old fool’s life. I suppose now that you are here, you can help tow his ship back to your friends.”

“Tow…? The _Milano?_ ”

Yondu hastily changed the subject. “You should come with us, sparky. I ain’t the only one who’s been runnin’ from shit.”

Nebula shook her head. “I tolerated your company because you may be of assistance in the war on Thanos, and you are seemingly incapable of walking down a street in broad daylight without getting yourself in trouble.”

Like father, like son. Kraglin swallowed his smirk when Nebula honed on him.

“Now Obfonteri is here, he can act as your chaperone. Plus…” Her scowl twisted further. “I have already seen far too much of either of you for my comfort.”

“Aw, we’d keep the PDA to a minimum!”

Kraglin glanced at Yondu with eyebrows raised. He hadn’t expected him to offer any compromises, let alone that. But if Yondu was fighting for this – the bulldog-jut of his jaw said he was – Kraglin had his back.

It felt good to say that again. Better than the sex and the kisses combined.

Kraglin cleared his throat. “C’mon, Nebula. You really think I can stop this guy doin’ whatever the hell he wants?”

Nebula couldn’t argue. “Very well,” she snapped, leading the way to the doors. “I will return you fools to the Guardians before setting out alone.”

She left no room for argument. But Kraglin glanced at Yondu from the corner of his eye and saw the grin.

“Sounds good,” he said. Then, out of the side of his mouth (once assured that Nebula was busy tramping through the slopped spirits and broken bottles that booby-trapped the floor around the bar): “You were jokin’ about the PDA, right?”

“Hell no!” Yondu reached under his own backside, zipping his pants over the sticky evidence. “She’ll cut yer balls off.”

Kraglin picked dried jizz off his jumpsuit. He surveyed the mess they’d made: a bitten pillow, upholstery scored by Yondu’s nails, several dubious stains. They’d marked their territory, alright.

“Yeah. Can’t be havin’ that.”

Yondu linked their arms, just briefly, long enough to pull Kraglin for the exit. “C’mon. Les' go home.”

 _Already am,_ muttered a soppy voice in Kraglin’s head. Hell. He’d definitely been spending too much time with Quill.

 

* * *

 

 

By the time the Nova-craft wheeled to a halt overhead and dropped a dollop of black-clad soldiers through the skylight, all that was left of the exhibitionists was ripped cushions, stale smells, and an abstract painting in white.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hope y'all enjoyed! Thank you to all my commenters. I love each and every one of you.**


	7. (Stakar) Purple, goodbye, warmth, travel, clothes

Stakar never allowed himself to miss Yondu. Not once.

That didn’t change the fact that he _did,_ but at least he could suffer through with gritted teeth: a tortured soldier, secure in the knowledge that if he gave a damn, it was without his permission.

That made it easier, somehow. But now, as Stakar sat on his crumpled bed and checked his comm-watch for the tenth time that night, he had no more excuses. No more reason not to let his mind rove.

It had been so long since he unlocked those memories that they had an oiliness to them, the surreal smoothness of a lucid dream. Gaps formed and smoothed over again as the years rolled into decades, like freeze-thaw cracks in rock.

Everything was a little too shiny; Yondu’s smile too warm and clean, his eyes too soft.

That couldn’t be right. Yondu was none of those things, not on the surface. He never had been, not from the early days when Stakar robbed his transport ship, mistaking it for an undercover bank vessel. What he found inside wasn’t bullion – it was treasure of a very different sort.

The ship had been bristling with security. All for one damn kid: a brat from an unregistered species with barely a paragraph to their name in the Intergalactic Encyclopaedia.

He didn’t look all that tough, if you discounted the experimental prototype welded to his skull.

Stakar felt it was all a bit ridiculous. So he broke into the brat’s cell and struck him a deal – the gag would come out, so long as he didn’t go loco and chomp out Stakar’s throat.

He didn’t. When Stakar eased the spit-softened leather from between his rotten teeth, the brat looked up at him with lucid eyes.

There were track marks all up his arms – intravenous feeding needles. The pressure sores oozed where the gag had been buckled for weeks without reprieve.

And yet.

His gaze was clear. His breaths were even. He only had one purpose, and as soon as the gag hit the floor, he put it into action.

Back in the present, Stakar brushed the bevelled lip of his comms watch. It had been quite the spectacle. The kid murdered every damn Kree aboard that ship, punching his needle through stomachs and groins. Then he turned to Stakar and smiled.

Not the nicest grin around. His teeth were a mess; several missing, punched out or rotten. The rest were yellow as sunshine. They were sharp and deadly as his needle – _arrow,_ Stakar saw, as he whistled it back to his hand, rubbing his thumb up and down the fletching.

But no matter how mad he looked, a demon stinking of burnt blood and radiation and god-awful dental decay, he was still shivering.

When Stakar took off his coat and wrapped it around his shoulders, he glared up at him with fierce red eyes.

“Ain't gonna call ya Master,” he said.

It sounded like a test. Stakar squeezed his shoulder, the jacket padding out the brittle bone.

“I don’t want you to. How does 'Stakar' sound?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Stakar sighed. His watch was as silent as the other nine times. Aleta mumbled in her sleep, twisting on the sheets. Stakar found her hip, squeezed it, and rolled back next to her again.

They weren't on and they weren't off – the morning, and Aleta's mood, would determine which way they swung. But at least she was there to tell him so.

Yondu? Yondu wasn't.

Which was why it was such a surprise to set off on his next job, stop for food and fuel at a grotty ambulant satellite port, and catch a flash of red leather from the corner of his eye.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The job was a fluke – a solo catering to Stakar's skillset, which cropped up on a day he didn't have to micromanage the other ninety-seven captains, mediate disputes, or smack Peter Quill on the knuckles for ever talking him into painting Yondu's ship.

Walking into Yondu as he trudged along the dim-lit, sewage stinking alley beside the public restrooms, a bowl of Krorvax chili iin one hand that smelt potent enough to put hairs on a Len's chest-chin?

That was more of a fluke still.

Stakar had been staring at the red leather and the beaky, pale-faced man inside it so severely that he forgot he was moving. When he felt the bump against his forearm, he didn't glance at the culprit.

He frowned at Kraglin Obfonteri instead: the long lean rat of a man who'd spent his brief stint among the ninety-nine dogging Yondu's heels or humping his leg. According to rumors, he'd progressed to humping other parts, but Stakar liked to think that he was above listening to gossip.

Still, hadn't Obfonteri been chaperoning Quill's crew? Stakar could think of only one conceivable reason why he would leave, and that was...

“He ran into the lavatory.”

Stakar turned around. He found an unamused Luphomoid, arms crossed, glowering up at him with mismatched eyes. He knew her. Not by name, but reputation.

“You're one of Thanos's...”

He teeth gritted like a shuttle squeezing into an undersized dock-bay.

“Don't. Say it.”

This was supposed to be a quick pit-stop, a snack-and-go. Stakar's chili bowl sweltered against his glove. Heat-haze bubbled above it, like the shimmer over the vent ducts that blasted out unfiltered air from the slums beneath the satellite's crust.

Everything smelt here – ripe bodies, dead bodies, dying bodies, worse. Even this young woman – if she was young at all; cybernetics made it difficult to tell – had a scent to her. Cold and sharp, offset by petrochemicals.

Stakar didn't want to know what she could smell in return. This was a fast-paced job on a tight schedule; hell, Stakar was supposed to be parking his ship in the Ganthrax nebula and activating his solar wings right about now, shooting across the spangled cloud of hot gas and new stars at the speed of light itself.

He didn't exactly have hours spare for showering, let alone selecting cologne.

He moved the chili bowl a little closer to himself.

“What do you want? What are you talking about? Who's in the restroom?”

_And why are you with Obfonteri?_

The Luphomoid rolled her eyes – although it was hard to tell.

“Yondu's in that restroom,” she said, pointing. “Right there. You bumped into him, he saw who you were, and _ran_ _like the coward he is._ ”

She raised her voice on those last words. Obfonteri was busy haggling over three portions of chili from the stall Stakar had just left. Between the chef's replies, the threatening bash of his ladle on the tureen, and the hiss from the nearest vent, acoustics weren’t the best. But Stakar still swore he heard an angry thump, like a blue fool just punched the lavatory door.

He looked at the chili in his hand. He thought of his mission, and empty comms, and the purple blush of the nebula.

“Y'know what?” he said. “I think I need a whizz.”

If the Luphomoid's lip curled any higher it'd retreat up her nose and be lost forever. “You're holding food.”

“I haven’t touched it. Here.” He pushed it into her hands, the bowl tapping her metal thumb. “Enjoy.”

And without waiting for her sneer, he stalked to the restroom door, kicked it open – it had some disconcerting splashes on it, and these gloves were fresh on yesterday – and treated Yondu to a tired smile.

“Old friend.”

“I'm pissin'. Ya don't talk to a guy when he's pissin'.”

“You're standing in front of the wall with your cock in your hands. That's not pissing.”

“Well, can't exactly get out a stream when you're here, can I? I'm shy.”

That notion was ridiculous enough to win a snort. “You are anything but.”

Yondu tucked himself away. He didn't turn to face Stakar, his shoulders pushed high enough to brush the rings in his ears. “I ain't washed my hands yet. Don't go expectin' a hug or nothin'.”

Stakar eyed the drain – or more specifically, the colony of flies breeding in there. “I wouldn't try. Did someone get flushed down there?”

“Not by me. You could always stick yer head down and check.”

This was a typical slum-shitter, with a single hole bared to the air at the bottom of a trough-like camber. A flusher squirted a gush of grimy water, which sluiced away all but the claggiest offerings.

Stakar's nostrils tried to pinch shut.

“Pass.”

“Mm.”

They stood in silence after that, Yondu still turned away. Stakar ran through possible conversation topics in his head, turning up one blank after the next.

“What're you doing out here,” he tried. He put up his hands when Yondu twisted to glare at him. “I'm not trying to pry. Just. Curious. I haven't seen you since you left the hospital.”

Yondu's glare dissolved into a grin. It was short-lived, but Stakar's heart thudded double time. He was back there again, in that stinking cell, wrapping a dark blue coat around paler blue shoulders and telling this boy to call him, the Ravager Admiral, by his given name.

“How much'd that droid cost to replace?”

“The hospital's on our protection racket. We stop scavengers stealing their bacta shipments; they give us top-notch medical care whenever it's needed and pay a Lunarly-stipend. I don't think they dared complain.”

It was all facts, simple and back-stripped. But Yondu looked disappointed, like he used to in the good old days when he hid funereal firecrackers in Marty's engines and proudly waited for Stakar to dress him down and stick him on bog shift until the end of the Annual.

Like he wanted his _attention._ Because apparently calling every day and providing a high-quality Shi'ar health droid for him to smash wasn't enough.

Stakar sighed. He'd told himself that Yondu ran away because he wanted to, because he needed space, because it was all too damn much, going from the most reviled man on the Ravager blacklist to a father, a son and a re-initiated captain in the space it took to wake from his coma.

Most likely, that was a factor. But sometimes when you ran away, it was because you wanted people to run after you.

“Yondu,” he said heavily. “I'm sorry.”

Yondu hunched again, winding tight like a spring. Stakar wasn't sure what'd happen when all that pent-up tension exploded, but he doubted it would be pretty.

“I don't wanna hear this.”

“I know. But I had to say it, just that once.” Stakar tweaked up a corner of his mouth. “For myself more than anything. When you're ready to hear more, you tell me, right?”

Yondu stood so still he shook, just a little.

He was too old to accept a coat around the shoulders nowadays though. Too tired and suspicious and ground up by the galaxy.

But his eyes still had that same brightness. A little greedy, a little animal, and with far more sentiment than Yondu cared to admit.

Stakar rephrased. “No. You'll never do that. Not if I give you the choice. So...”

“You take the choice away?” Yondu tipped his head back, tugging on the bottom of his cravat. Just enough to show a glint of silver-blue scar.

There was nothing vulnerable about it, that band of paler skin that wrapped Yondu's throat. This was a challenge. Defiance.

It gave Stakar great pleasure to let Yondu win.

“No. I would never hurt you like that. I care about you far too much.”

That had him bristling. “I ain't _hurt_! An' – an' stars, you old sap. Keep yer damn sentiment to yerself.”

“I'll just come find you,” Stakar continued, still smiling, palms still upraised. It felt right, as he said it. Like this was the way forwards. Like he was no longer floating in limbo, with only his empty comm-inbox for a nightlight. “Once a Lunar, or thereabouts. If you want to talk, you talk. If you tell me to fuck off, I'll fuck off. But I'll be there, Yondu. Every Lunar. As long as it takes.”

Yondu licked his lips. He opened his mouth, but whatever he wanted to say, it stuck. “Damn stalker,” he said eventually. He turned to Stakar fully, glowering at him from beneath his heavy brows. “Go on then. Fuck off.”

Another test. Another push, just in case he didn't mean it, just in case he really _was_ going to do everything Yondu feared.

Take away his choices. Abandon him again. Lock him up in a cage, or free him to the wilds, forbidding him from ever coming home.

Stakar's smile dimmed, but only a little. “I'll see you next Lunar.”

“That's it?” Yondu's incredulous tone stopped him, one foot on the threshold.

The door had been automatic once, but now it took a shoulder and a grunt to lever it open, revealing Nebula and Kraglin with four bowls of chili between them. Kraglin, sneering at Stakar with unbridled content, placed one down in the general filth that littered the satellite's streets.

“Here,” he said, giving it a nudge with his foot for good measure. “That one's yours. He ain't eatin' with us, is he sir?”

“No, he ain't. But that's really it? You're just gonna walk away?”

Stakar tipped his head back, searching for a hint of starlight spearing the smog that turned this station to a compact grey-green marble from above. The air tasted impossibly fouler outside of the bog block. “You asked me to. So. Until next month, like I said.”

“Y-yeah, I...”

Stakar turned back, keeping the door wedged. His smile was all-too knowing. “Did you want something, Yondu?”

He couldn't ask for it. Far too proud for that – if this thing could even be called pride, the image of himself Yondu projected so desperately to the outside galaxy. More like a self defence mechanism – a caterpillar that pretended to be a snake until it convinced everyone, even itself.

When Stakar stepped into the shadows once more, the door thunking shut behind him – and cutting off Kraglin's complaints – Yondu didn't lash out, didn't bite. He stiffened as Stakar approached, but the quiet rasp of the flies in the drain comforted him that no one else was watching.

Slowly, gradually, he let himself sink forwards, until Stakar's arms closed over his back.

He didn't return the embrace – which had nothing to do with the lack of hand-washing facilities; Stakar knew Yondu too well to believe that actually bothered him. But he rested there a moment, cheek pillowed on Stakar's shoulder plate, mouldy breath steaming at his ear.

He sighed, a quiet little shudder. Then he pulled away.

“Better?” Stakar asked.

Yondu bared his teeth. “Seem t'remember tellin' you to fuck off, old man.”

“Like you're one to talk. But I'll go now. I promise.”

Yondu chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Quill,” he said. “He doin' okay?”

Stakar winced internally. “I suppose Kraglin told you what he did to your ship?”

The earlier silence had been awkward.

This silence? Far more dangerous.

It was a silence of the goopy, viscous type, the sort that settled like concrete in your lungs. Like the ocean rearing back before a tsunami, the stillness of space before a supernova.

“No,” said Yondu, after a very long moment, during which Stakar mentally chewed on his own foot and wished Peter luck. “He sure as hell did not. Per'aps you could fill me in?”

Oh no. That was one tantrum Stakar could do without – especially since, at Aleta’s insistence, he supplied Gamora with the painting sloop.

He exited the restroom post-haste.

“I'm so sorry. I'd love to, but I've got this mission I've gotta get back to. Nice seeing you again, old friend. I'll find you next month. Send comm coordinates if you want to make it easy. But for now – I'll catch you later.”

“Stakar! Stakar, don'tchu dare, dammit! You just wait, you damn...”

The rest was cut off beneath the crackle of solar wings. The last thing Stakar heard before he jumped into the air, old knees clicking a little more than they used to, was Yondu turning on his first mate with a low growl of “ _Kraglin?”_

Oh dear.

Still, as Stakar swooped to the dockyards and kicked the hatch from his cockpit, he got a good look at what became of Quill’s vessel.

Eesh. Seemed it really was true what they said.

Like father, like son.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hope you all enjoyed this!! I'll add the bonus chapter tomorrow/at some point/who knows when. Thank you ALL SO MUCH for your comments/kudos. They mean the woooooorld.**


	8. Peter (Home)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **And, of course, the bonus....**

Babu claimed that one day his tahlei would hang as limp as hers.Thank flark he took matters into his own hands. Weren’t right for a spacer to tote around the mark of their age like a great flapping flag. Yondu much preferred his mechanical replacement - until, that is, he had to walk through a low-flying doorway.

He saw mush. It was like going space-blind all over again.

Gradually the mush consolidated into two twiggy arms. They were braced diagonally, their palms gripping equally twiggy knees.

“Are you okay?” Kraglin asked.

Yondu unclogged his tongue from where it had stuck to the back of his throat. “I ain’t talkin’ to you,” he growled.

Nebula made one of her favorite noises -  _hhh-thuk_ , it went, air pushed through her teeth with an aggravated tut. “You are as infuriating as a child, Udonta.”

“Hell no.” Yondu eased himself to sit, pausing halfway until the room quit spinning. “Kids’re way worse. Trust me. Krags here agrees – don’tchu Krags? Put you on babysittin’ duty enough when the brat was young.”

“Thought you wasn’t talkin’ to me?”

But a gloved hand hung in front of his face, and Yondu used it to heave himself vertical, yanking Kraglin down in compensation. Equal and opposite reaction, and all that.

“Who said that?”

“Har-har.”

“Think there’s a rat caught in the vents, sparky?” Yondu squeezed Kraglin’s fingers far tighter than his mate’s bird-thin bones appreciated. “Or do I got one here?”

“Sir…”

“S’my ship, Krags. My damn fuckin’ ship. And you let ‘em do that to it.” He waved at the porthole, through which vulgar orange and blue clashed like they'd caught an amber-skinned Xandarian  _in flagrante delicto_  with a Kree. “This’s worse than the mutiny.”

If Kraglin shrunk much more he’d shrivel away. “Thought we’d sorted that ‘un, sir.”

Honestly. If Kraglin didn’t think Yondu’d be hauling out that grievance at every opportunity for the next however-many years he had left, he didn’t know Yondu nearly as well as he thought.

“Did ya hear something?" he asked, scanning the bulging overhead pipes. "Or were it just the solar wind?”

Nebula ground her teeth. “I’m going to wait in the airlock,” she said. “Vent me if you please. It would be preferable to your bickering.”

And Rocket called  _him_ drama queen! Yondu was sorely tempted to pass on the insult, but suspected she’d retaliate, potentially with a chunk of titanium ripped from their M-ship’s interior wall.

Best not risk decompression. Yondu’d taken one space-dip too many. He could confirm that it was every bit as miserable as the Safety PSAs made out.

"Have fun, send a holocard," he told Nebula's retreating back. And with that he rubbed his smarting head, shouldered Kraglin from his path, and stomped for the rear bulkhead to await docking.

This time, he remembered to duck.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Peter was waiting for them. “Before you hit me,” he told Yondu, “this was all Gamora’s idea.”

Yondu’s tirade cut off before it began. He frowned. “Yer tellin’ me to hit yer girlfriend?”

Gamora examined her fingernails. “You could try.” Then she spotted Nebula, slouched against the airlock wall (Yondu suspected she’d picked that spot on purpose, both because it made for a good ambush point and because the shadow fell across her face in a way that made her look like the villain of some cheesy Xandarian superhero flick.)

“Sister?”

“Sister,” Nebula affirmed.

Gamora didn’t seem to know how to react. Her hand went to her sword, then to Peter’s wrist, then awkwardly lowered again.

“Hi,” she said.

Nebula actually looked a little amused. Must be new for them, Gamora being the flustered one. “Hi.”

“Uh.” Peter raised his hand, like he was taking part in one of those virtual school classes designed for Spacer brats - the sort a decent dad might’ve paid for him to attend. “Are we forgetting that this is supposed to be about me and Yondu yelling at each other?

Gamora ignored him. She didn’t quite make it look effortless, but then again, Yondu supposed she’d only known the guy half a year.

“Why are you here?” she asked Nebula. Her tone was far too flat, but that in itself told Yondu everything he needed to know – that she was hiding her hope, that she was afraid of it, but that she felt it regardless.

“Boredom, mostly,” he answered in sparky's stead, before she could say something sullen. “Get lonely, don’t it? Out there by yourself in the black?”

Nebula scoffed. “Try ‘self-interest’. I am merely ensuring that you are in a fit state to take on Thanos. As these fools require babysitting…”

“Hey,” protested Kraglin. “It were cap’n who got himself shot.”

Peter’s eyes went round. “You got yourself _shot?_ Where? Let me see, let me see – do you need the medbay? Do you need _Stakar’s_ medbay? We can get you over there in” -

Yondu showed Gamora how this ignoring thing was done.

“I didn’t _need_ your help,” he told Nebula. Couldn't have her getting the wrong idea.

Kraglin sniggered for all of a second before he remembered Yondu was pissed at him and slouched even lower than before. “Just like she didn’t need you as an excuse to check up on her sister, sir?”

“Indeed,” Nebula snapped. “I am glad we sorted that out.” She very adamantly didn’t meet Gamora’s eyes.

Peter groaned. “God. You’re all as ridiculous as each other.” He stepped back, clearing their passage onto his ship. _Yondu’s_ ship. Yondu’s horrifically blue and orange monstrosity of a ship, which would flush away any credibility that was still clinging to his rep after the mutiny.

Oh yeah. Yondu wasn’t gonna let this one go.

“Let’s head to mess,” said his idiot Terran. “I’ll tell the guys you’re back – Rocket and Groot missed you, though they won’t say it. And Drax” –

Yondu didn't care about their resident protein-shake advert, much less his opinions on Yondu's parenting skills. Drax made them plenty clear last time they talked.

“Hell no,” he interrupted, catching Peter by the sleeve. Boy’d unpicked the stitching on his flame patches – yet another of those symbolic divides between them.

 _I have to go away_  echoed mournfully around Yondu’s head. He had to wait for it to fade before he could continue, the zune burning a hole through his inner pocket lining.

“You said somethin’ about us yellin’ at each other,” he said, glowering at Peter from beneath his heavy brows. “Perhaps we oughta get to that.”

Peter’s shoulders sagged. “I _told_ you it was Gamora’s idea.”

“He’s right,” Greenie chimed in. She lurked ominously in Yondu’s peripherals, one hand on the hilt of her sword. “It was my idea.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

“Peter merely enabled me.”

Peter groaned.

“As did Stakar and Aleta.”

Huh. Stakar had failed to mention that.

“And you,” Gamora continued, eyes thin as dagger blades. Yondu tapped his chest.

“Me?”

“Yes. You stole Peter’s ship. You provoked this, looking for retaliation, because fighting is apparently the only way you know how to interact with the people you love.”

Yondu crossed his arms. He didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. Only _he_ was allowed to spit truths at himself. Possibly the Rat too, if he was in a generous mood.

“Watch the tone, greenie.”

“We,” Gamora continued, “are not going to chase after you. But we are not going to force you away either. If you leave, you leave because you choose to do so.”

Was it Yondu’s imagination, or was she staring at him a little bit too intently? Almost like she was trying to project her words at…

…At the other blue idiot, standing not five steps to the left?

Yondu sighed, scratching his stubble. “Really, now.”

Gamora was in full flow. “Peter’s not going to make you leave as soon as you mess up. He’s not going to force you to stay either. But he’d like it if you did. Just. For a little while.”

Peter’s grumbles of “Don’t put words in my mouth” went unnoticed.

“Sure,” drawled Yondu, looking at Gamora on the level. “This is _all_ about me and Quill.”

Nebula slunk further into the shadows of the dock clamp. Yondu sent an eyeroll after her. He didn't have the energy to play papa and sit her and her sister on the naughty step until they made up – he had his own brat who was long-overdue a discipline. He reinstated his handful of Peter’s collar and tramped past the lot of them, dragging the overgrown goofball after him.

Peter squawked louder than the Orlonis that occasionally fell into the fan vents, but he didn't actively try to escape. “Hey – where’re we going? This isn’t the way to mess.”

Yondu stared grimly ahead. “We ain’t going to mess.”

“Where’re we going then?” Peter grinned with admirable, if laughable, hope. “Did you dock the _Milano_ on the other side of the ship?”

“Nah.” Yondu released Peter, leaving the other three far behind. Kraglin’s awkward attempts to extricate himself from between the two sisters petered after them.

Yondu wasn't too concerned. Forcing him to act the mediator would suffice as punishment for his latest crime (gross negligence: looking the other way as Peter defaced Yondu's property). Plus, if either one of them stabbed him, he could show the jackass what it was like to moulder on a hospital bed for a month without any offers of a hand on your nethers besides your own.

Yondu knelt down, spinning the clamp lock on the trapdoor. He gestured at the shortcut beyond: a borehole dripping with dusty cobwebs. “I didn’t dock the _Milano_ on the other side of the ship.”

Worry crinkled Peter’s forehead. “Where’d you dock her then? You flew here in Nebula’s M-ship with that old bit of burnt-out salvage bobbing from the back, so you must’ve parked her _somewhere._ ”

That borehole opened onto the corridor below, right next to their destination. Yondu wondered whether he could make it there before Quill caught him.

Probably not.

“Wait until we’re in the ring,” he told Peter with a shark-sharp flash of a grin. “Then I’ll tell ya.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Yondu'd been stuck in a rut his whole damn life, cycling back to one shitty memory after another.

 

Burning stubble.

 

Babu's tahlei.

 

_Pretty as an angel._

 

The knife trembling in time with the pulse in his ears. Tahlei on the ground, pain a pike rammed into his spine.

 

Battlefields, blood, smoke, burning stubble once again.

 

Change had to start somewhere. But equally, sometimes you had to fall back on what you knew.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The ring. More like a circle of hell – at least, that was what it seemed like during Peter’s miserable and black-eyed adolescence. Now though, with the dome devoid of hooting, moonshine-glugging Ravagers, it didn’t incite that familiar coil of dread and adrenaline that knotted up the muscles of his chest. It had been neutered, drained of everything but memories, fading and crackled as an old holodisc. 

The smell was ripe as ever though. Sweat and blood and stinking breath. The last one at least could be blamed on Yondu; Peter had been religiously chomping clean-choo since he grew his adult set of teeth and realized these ones didn’t grow back.

They sat side by side on one of the old gun crates in the corner, bare from the waist up, with the exception of Yondu’s scarf and their generous dappling of bruises.

“Greenie’s gonna be pissed,” the old blue bastard observed.

Peter sighed. She was, no doubt about it. “Probably figured we’d sit down and talk _._ ”

“Because that’s gonna happen in this crappy lil' family.”

Peter nudged him, managing to find a rare spot between his ribs that wasn’t the color of overripe eggplant. “Hey now. We’re all crappy family here.”

“Mm.” They sat quietly for a moment. Then: “Feels bit better though? Right?”

Sounded like Yondu actually cared about the answer. Peter shrugged “I guess? I’m sorer than I’m pissed off at you, if that’s what you mean.”

Yondu studied his chipped knuckles. Peter’s cheek throbbed in sympathy, bearing their print.

“Y’know,” he said, then paused. Peter couldn’t explain why – Yondu’s face certainly gave nothing away; poker still with eyes fixed on the middle distance. But somehow, he knew to wait him out. He busied himself with probing his side, pudgy with bruising from an enthusiastic introduction to Yondu’s knee.

Let the old git find his own words. No sense hurrying him on.

“I ain’t good at talkin’,” said Yondu eventually. “Y’know. About feelin’s, an’ all that shit.”

“I’d never have guessed.” His grin wilted at the glare. “Sorry. Continue.”

Yondu bowed low, elbows resting on his knees. Peter would’ve blamed it on the tenderization he’d given the man’s gut in payback, if he couldn’t see the distant expression on his old blue face.

“You asked,” he said, quiet and sincere, “whether we was gonna talk about somethin’ I called ya. When I was all drugged up an’ out of it.”

_Master._

Peter briefly forgot how to swallow. He choked on his own spit, hacked it back up again, and nodded. “Uh. Yeah.”

“We ain’t.”

“Okay. That’s. Um, that’s okay. I don’t want to make you talk about anything you’re not comfortable talking about, so” –

“I ain’t _comfortable_ telling ya how much I love you either.”

Peter’s mouth dropped. His throat itched like a blob of spit had lodged in the wrong pipe, but in that moment, not even his cough reflex responded.

“What?” he croaked.

Yondu turned navy gradually. It crept up on him, steady and inexorable, a tidal wave of blood rising in his cheeks.

“Don’t know… Don’t know how much I can blame on that, uh, _thing_ I called ya, before it's just on me. But just cause I don’t talk about it, it don’t mean I ain’t… Y’know.”

Peter did know. “Feeling it,” he said. Yondu’s nod was so stiff he looked like a wind-up puppet.

“Yeah.” They sat together in silence. Then Yondu made to push off the crate. “Right. Good talk, Quill. Bye.”

“Oh no you don’t.” Peter caught his arm. “Dropping the L-word doesn’t get you out of blowing up my ship.”

“Tech-nick-ly, I weren’t the one what blew her up. I were the _victim,_ an…”

“Or running away in the first place,” Peter continued, a little louder. For once, Yondu didn’t turn it into a pissing contest and holler back at full volume. He shut his mouth, slowly, like it physically pained him (it might, considering how hard Peter had socked him in the jaw). He jerked through another nod.

_I’m listening._

This was it. Peter’s big chance. He didn’t want to blow it. He let the silence sit a little, long enough that Yondu started peeping wistfully at the exit, arm tugging ever-so-slightly in Peter's grip. Peter didn't release him - didn't dare. Not yet. 

“Sorry," he said. "Just don’t wanna say something stupid and tick you off.”

For some reason, that made Yondu relax. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Peter echoed. Then, with dawning realization: “Was that why you left?”

“Huh?”

“Why you took that holiday?”

It all started making sense, clicking together like shapes in a jigsaw. Yondu's argument with Peter as soon as he opened his eyes. His avoidance of Stakar and Kraglin – because sure, Kraglin had stayed away, but if Yondu _really_ wanted to see him he’d have conned his robo-doc into dragging the skinny Hraxian from his hole.

“You think we can’t handle it? You think we can’t handle you?”

Yondu tensed up. “Sure as hell doesn’t seem like it,” he said. Then, sneering at Peter’s boots: “Helluva lot easier to care about a sleepin’ asshole than that same asshole when it’s shittin’ all over yer nice clean floor.”

Peter recoiled. “G _ross._ Like, was that analogy really necessary? Really?”

“Got the point across, didn’t it?”

“Still gross! And…”

He studied Yondu: the baggy eyes, the jut of his bruise-black jaw, the lacerated web on his temple and the scarf that hid the other scars around his neck, from where a collar had been fastened too tight for a growing boy. He remembered being a growing boy himself, split lips and grass-stained jeans, Batman plasters over the grazes on his knees. He remembered running from mom’s outstretched hand as fast as his little legs could carry him.

Yeah. Perhaps Peter understood Yondu more than he let on.

“Just because something’s _easier_ , it doesn’t mean it’s what we want. You know that, right?”

Yondu didn’t reply.

Peter pressed on: “You’re a dick, okay? Nobody’s denying it. For whatever reason…” Because yeah, that little whimper of _master, don't –_ was going to haunt his nightmares. “You kinda suck at being anything other than the boss of a bunch of rowdy space pirates.”

Yondu opened his mouth. Peter shook his head.

“Hell _no,_ that was not an invitation for you to boss my crew about. But the point is, we all know what we signed up for. Stakar knows you’re a prick. I know it too. Hell, Kraglin knows how much of an ass you are, and he still likes you.”

“Likes this ass too.”

“ _Gross_. We all chose to stick around, man. The only one who left was you.”

Yondu absorbed that slowly, Peter watching him the whole way. He gave his captive arm an awkward pat and tentatively unpeeled his fingers, releasing his breath only when Yondu didn't sprint for the door.

“And – and if you need to leave again, that’s. That’s okay. Like Gamora said. Not going to stand in your way.” He managed a smile, a small bright flicker of a thing, dying quick as the headlamps on his busted M-ship. “Just know you can come back, okay? You can come back any time.”

“I would’ve told ya that too,” Yondu said quietly. He lifted his coat off the crate, patting the pockets until he located the slim black box. “Y’know. When you headed out with the orb. Weren’t no need for none of that stealin’ business.”

Peter gulped. His gaze stuck to the zune as Yondu twiddled it between his hands, like how he fiddled with the toys on his dashboard when he was plotting a heist.

But that didn't mean he was gonna let Yondu get away with lying.

“Uh, no. You’d have tried to keep me there with threats and bribes and blackmail.”

“You coulda given me a chance to prove you wrong.” But despite the bluster, it didn’t sound like Yondu had much faith in himself. Peter sighed.

“Hey,” he said. “I had to get away too.” He nodded to the zune. “There’s a song on there about that. We can listen to it, if you want. Uh. Together?”

A question, a plea. Yondu blinked at him incredulously, then barked out a laugh.

“Hell no. You blasted that damn ‘Father and Son’ shit non-stop when I was under. Still ain’t got that chorus out my head.”

That was fair. Didn’t stop the rush of disappointment that drained Peter faster than a pulled plug. “Okay.”

“See?” Yondu jabbed at him with a broken ink-black nail. “There ya go, makin' that damn face again like I kicked yer puppy. Provin’ my point.”

“Oh yeah? And what point’s that, old man? That we’d all be better off if you’d died out there?”

He expected Yondu to scoff, smack the back of his head, mutter something grouchy about learning respect. He didn’t expect what he got: an awful, stark glimpse into Yondu’s soul through his wide pink eyes.

“Oh god.”

He pulled back – then changed his mind and pushed forwards again. He didn’t give Yondu chance to tap out of the hug, careless for the bruises that throbbed their protest up and down his sides.

“ _No,_ Yondu. No. _God_ no. Don’t you – don’t you _ever_ , don’t you _ever think…_ ”

Yondu didn’t punch him. That in itself was cause for concern. He just stood there, still as wood, contorted into the embrace but not returning it.

Peter held him like that for a whole minute, squeezing as if he could compact everything he felt into Yondu through the barrier of their skin. The fierce rush of affection dissipated all too quickly, leaving him more than a little awkward in its wake. They were both gritty with dry sweat – and no matter how much Peter l-worded Yondu, the geezer didn’t wash.

“No,” he said fiercely.

He tried to search Yondu’s eyes, to make sure what he said was sinking in, but Yondu wouldn’t look at him. Peter made the most of his distraction – just like Yondu taught him – and snatched the Zune instead. That jerked Yondu from his scrutiny of his filthy toes.

“Dammit, boy! The hell happened to lettin' me give that back in my own sweet time?”

“Took too long,” Peter retorted. “Lost patience. Snooze you lose, that's the Ravager way.” He clicked through the menu, still a little giddy at the thought of it – 300 songs, all of them for him. “Forget ‘Father and Son’. Let’s listen to something new.”

Eventually, he found a name he recognized. He’d love to explore the others, absorb as much and as widely as he could, every genre out there. He didn’t miss much about Earth, and considering that he was living every kid's dream out here among the stars, he wasn’t especially curious about whether his backwater mudhole was chugging through the proto-phases of extraterrestrial exploration. They probably hadn’t even reached the first exoplanet in the star-system next door.

But the music… Oh, the music. Some days he thought he’d go back for that alone.

Today though, he wasn't looking for new. He needed something familiar. Something that smelt of mom’s hugs and family, safety and hope.

“You ever listen to Queen on this thing?” he asked. “’We Will Rock You’? No? Okay.”

He handed Yondu one bud and screwed the other into place. Yondu looked at it like he couldn't quite believe it was real, but eventually, he crawled back onto the crate, patting for Peter to sit beside him. He popped the bud in his ear with a disquieting squelch.

Peter grimaced. He’d work out how to clean that later.

For now, he shuffled until his shoulder bumped Yondu’s, the heat of their fight fading into something cosier.

“Good to have you home, dad,” he said. Then he shut his eyes and pressed play.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **And there we go!! Thank you all SO MUCH for every comment, no matter how small, and every click of that kudos button. Love you guys. You make the effort I put into my writing worth it.**

**Author's Note:**

> **More soon to follow - in exchange for kudos and comments! I realized that somehow, I have yet to write a generic Yondu-survives-and-has-to-deal-with-being-a-dad fic. Like, that's been a _theme_ in a lot of my stuff, but I haven't tackled it directly. So, here we are. About to embark on a journey. I do hope you enjoy it.**


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